Technology

59572 readers

4246 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

745

REPORT: Arm is sensationally canceling the license that allowed Qualcomm to make Snapdragon chips which power everything from Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs to Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 1 month ago by buckbanzai@infosec.pub to c/technology@lemmy.world

212 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

And it does not concern you that this RVA profile is version 23? Which means there are a number of CPUs based on lower versions, too, as they don't just update on a whim? And they are incompatible, with version 23 because they lack instructions?

So a compiler would have to support at least a certain number of those profiles (usually, parts in the embedded world are supported for 10+ years!), and be capable of supporting the one or other non-RVA extension, too, to satisfy customer needs.

That is exactly what I meant with "too many standards".

[–] tekato@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

And it does not concern you that this RVA profile is version 23

Not sure where you got that information. There are only 5 RISC-V profiles.

And they are incompatible, with version 23 because they lack instructions?

Like all the x86 CPUs from a few years ago that don’t have all the new extensions? Not supporting new extensions doesn’t mean the CPU is useless, only that it’s worse than new ones, as things should be when there’s progress. Or I guess you throw out your x86 CPU every time Intel/AMD create a new instruction?

So a compiler would have to support at least a certain number of those profiles

Do you think compilers only target one x86 version with one set of instructions? For example in x86, there’s SIMD versions SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, compilers support all of them, and that’s literally just for the SIMD instructions. What’s new?

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes, there are differences in certain x86 command sets. But they actually have a market. RISC-V is just a niche, and splintering in a small niche is making the support situation worse.

[–] tekato@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

making the support situation worse

The support situation is so bad that both GCC and LLVM have extensive for RISC-V.