Re:Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?
by yjftsjthsd-h on Friday February 09, 2024 @12:58AM
(#39311861)
I'm not sure I follow your point. They're a vendor using POWER chips to provide blob-free computers. I'm fairly confident that they could make their own chips, but given that they'd need a fab and call it a billion dollars that's an impractical step up from building machines around existing chips. None of this constitutes them having "torched their own roadmap", just being stuck between a rock (their product being decent performance blob-free computers) and a hard place (needing to source CPUs).
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Re:Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?
by brucehoult on Friday February 09, 2024 @02:31AM
(#39312382)
When someone says "build their own chip" they do not in general mean to extract their own silicon ingots from sand, or to build their own fab. They mean to "tape out" their own SoC design and send it to a fab owner such as TSMC, Samsung, Intel for the physical manufacturing step.
Apple does not own a fab. Arm does not own a fab. Qualcomm does not own a fab. I believe IBM does not own any modern fab (some built in early 2000s, yes).
Re:Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?
by yjftsjthsd-h on Saturday February 10, 2024 @02:53AM
(#39324424)
Yes? When I said "they'd need a fab and call it a billion dollars" I meant they'd need the use of a fab, not that they'd have to own the factory themselves. I don't see how it matters anyways
Re:Ask HN: Does anyone care about OpenPOWER?
by brucehoult on Saturday February 10, 2024 @05:16AM
(#39325039)
I'm not sure where that billion dollars is going to go then.
SiFive has raised a total funding of $366M over 6 rounds and 9 years, which has been enough to give them leadership in the RISC-V ecosystem and a product range spanning virtually the entire range ARM's does -- from equivalents for Cortex-M0 (in fact lower) up to Cortex-X3 (and POWER9) for their latest core announced in October (P870, 18 SPECInt2l6/GHz).