Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready

Re:Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready by IshKebab on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @03:18AM (#38081227)

Android phones are pretty much embedded devices though (unfortunately) so I suspect we'll see a load of phones that have super custom kernels with tons of hard-coded driver configs etc. Similar to SBC other than the RPi.

It's kind of an issue for ARM too but they're a bit further towards solving it than RISC-V.

In any case it's mainly a problem for people that want OS updates or the ability to install other OSes, so it's not going to affect app writers or normal users much.

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Re:Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready by snvzz on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @03:44AM (#38081394)

>It's kind of an issue for ARM too but they're a bit further towards solving it than RISC-V.

Can you elaborate on why do you think so?

I understand it is the opposite: RISC-V is much further towards solving it.

This is because RISC-V has put effort from the start into standardizing boot process (spl -> sbi -> uboot|uefi), ISA (profiles), the firmware-kernel interface (sbi, uefi protocol, acpi) as well as the platform itself (platform spec, standards for interrupts, timers, hypervisor support, the uart requirement, the watchdog and further platform standardization efforts).

This has happened (and is happening still) before significant deployment of SoCs using RISC-V microarchitectures as the application processor.

Meanwhile, ARM realized, quite late, that this is important, and is lagging behind, with plenty of non-fixable, bespoke platform hardware deployed, and low vendor uptake as they are asking their clients to change what they already have in place.

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Re:Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready by ryukafalz on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @08:30AM (#38083751)

I haven't been keeping up to date with RISC-V happenings lately but does this imply that it'll be easier for distros to have live images that can install to arbitrary RISC-V machines like we're used to on x86? If so, that's exciting!

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Re:Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready by snvzz on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @04:38PM (#38091036)

>it'll be easier for distros to have live images that can install to arbitrary RISC-V machines like we're used to on x86?

Yes. The experience will be equal or better over the IBM PC-derived platform, by design.

PC was an accidental platform, RISC-V platform spec is an intentional (and very informed) one.

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