[superdug]

I wanted to check first, and I wasn't saddened when I found netbsd was also available for riscv64. That being said, having a full debian suite to nicely land on is what will gain it adoption. It's a chicken and egg problem where one side is vigorously designing and publishing a hardware spec in search of an operating system and at the same time an entire eco-system of open source development is in search of open hardware to run on.

Fully open systems are an entirely ideological win at this point with a now sub-$50 entry point setups available today. Please also do not get me wrong, working around copy protection and binary blobs serve as amazing learning tools for tinkerers, but not for true beginners.

Some people learn from hands on breaking it and putting it back together, but others learn by knowing that there is a fully documented dearth of information within a mere quandary of any part of the system.

These two worlds are not antagonistic, but in fact entirely complementary to each other. To fully understand and master a system, you have to break it and know how to fix it. While on the same hand knowing how to see what part broke and see an exact way to fix it in the completely free entirety of information available until time itself forgets it, gives you the confidence that there isn't anything you don't know or knowing instantly where to find it if you don't.

That free and open standard will lend itself to future chip designs, broader software options for those designs, and start to make computers adopt there new role as segregated fully autonomous systems loosely networked together into the same status that all 99th percentile that all previous technology has adopted throughout history.

The nerds won, we made computers into a skilled labor.

You're welcome.

[ilyt]

Only benefit is companies not having to pay ARM. The architecture NEVER WAS A PROBLEM for open, it was always the binary blobs required to run IP blocks put on the die with the cores that stopped people from using them.

ISA is the easy part. Even if you need to RE it, you only need to do it once.

Now hopefully with RISC V companies will be even more inclined to just upstream their drivers from the start (and not do the abominations that happen way too often on ARM side), but the ISA never was a problem for that.

[giantrobot]

> it was always the binary blobs required to run IP blocks put on the die with the cores that stopped people from using them

That's not going to change with RISC-V. If you've got silicon that has to conform with FCC regulations it's going to have non-modifiable firmware. No matter how open the rest of the system is, your WiFi and Bluetooth (and any other radios) will have closed firmware.

[drmpeg]

Probably a better example than WiFi would be the on-chip SDRAM controller. It's always somebody else's IP and there's a blob in the boot firmware that's just binary register settings. Like so:

https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/blob/master/arch/riscv/dts/...

[leonheld]

I'm not from the US so not really familiar with FCC regulations.

> If you've got silicon that has to conform with FCC regulations it's going to have non-modifiable firmware.

Can you explain 'why?' or maybe throw me a link or two? Thanks!

[giantrobot]

The why is simple: Power/frequency limits allow everybody to be able to use personal consumer devices without licensing and without preventing other people from using their devices. If you modified your WiFi to blast out a 10W signal across multiple channels at your house, you completely ruin my ability to use Wifi at my house next door. Radio spectrum is shared by everybody.

As for reading there's CFR title 47 [0]. Parts 15 and 18 are germane for unlicensed radios and electronic devices. Parts 22 and 24 cover cellular devices.

The regulations don't explicitly say anything about firmware but to build devices that follow the regulations end user modifiable firmware is an implicit restriction. Even user serviceable antennas are restricted because radio device licenses cover not just the electrical output but total gain of the shipped antenna.

[0] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47

[AnthonyMouse]

> The why is simple: Power/frequency limits allow everybody to be able to use personal consumer devices without licensing and without preventing other people from using their devices.

That explains why there are power/frequency limits, not why the device manufacturer should be deputized into responsibility for a sophisticated user's non-compliant device modifications.

Anyone can make an arc gap transmitter for morse code out of $3 in bits from any hardware store that will interfere with anybody else's radio devices in the vicinity. Anyone can buy ham radio equipment or built it from parts and do all kinds of non-compliant things with it. Then the FCC comes after you, not the hardware store or the device OEM.

Or more likely in the case of a WiFi device, comes after the person distributing custom firmware that purposely exposes a simple knob to allow unsophisticated users to exceed regulatory limits.

And if DD-WRT did that, they should expect a visit from The Government. But what should that have anything to do with Linksys or Netgear?

There aren't enough end users who know how to modify the firmware code themselves to matter, even if you make that "easy."

[giantrobot]

> There aren't enough end users who know how to modify the firmware code themselves to matter, even if you make that "easy."

This is just a silly statement. Go to an apartment complex sometime and browse the available WiFi networks. You'll see a huge number of them because everyone has the output power on their router set to the max value. There's plenty of places the 2.4GHz band is simply unusable because the noise floor is so high from a hundred base stations blasting out at full power.

If WifiBoost.exe could in tease that output power enough people would do it that WiFi or Bluetooth in some places would be completely unusable.

Modern radio basebands are largely software defined. The modulation/keying, power output, and transmitted bands are all defined in software. In order to sell that silicon as a Part 15 compliant device to end users the firmware needs to be locked. It's the digital equivalent of a fixed function radio. A manufacturer of a fixed function radio couldn't get a Part 15 license if it had a potentiometer on the back allowing you to dial up the output power, even if that potentiometer was locked under the case most people wouldn't open.

With an SDR the hardware plus software is considered the "device" for licensing purposes. If it supported unlocked or modifiable firmware it couldn't be easily/at all sold as a Part 15 device. It would be a different class of device and would require the end user to have a license to operate it.

[Pet_Ant]

I think it is because the firmware guarantees that the radio behaves according to specifications. Much like the governor on a car.

[megous]

Can you explain wifi chips like rtl8852 that have power levels and channels specified in the linux drivers and are fcc certified, then?

[giantrobot]

It only has power level control up to the limits for ISM devices on its operating frequencies. Its license is only valid for antennas with specific gain.

You technically can overwrite its firmware to turn the radio into some general purpose software defined radio transmitter but that's not how the device is licensed and sold.

[15155]

Where does the FCC specify the delivery format of firmware? Or what "firmware" is as a concept in general?

Non-modifiable - by whom and to what degree? One-time-programmable memory? Accepting only signed updates from the vendor? Where are these things specified in enumerated FCC regulations?

[ilyt]

Completely moot point. They are not selling a device. They are selling chip. It's on the device manufacturer to prevent it and it doesn't need to be in baseband chip.

[giantrobot]

For Part 15 devices the licensed portion of the device is the software and hardware that does the RF emission. Firmware defining operation is seen by the FCC (and other regulatory bodies in other countries) as the same thing as a circuit design of a fixed radio transmitter. To the point of firmware updates can require recertification just like a change in the BOM or circuit design would.

A RISC-V radio baseband will end up no more open than a Cortex-M one. The CPU core portion might be documented/open but not the full firmware. It'll still be effectively a black box no matter how open the specs on the processor.

[ur-whale]

No snarkiness intended, but I just read your post for the 3rd time and although I understand each sentence individually, I'm still not sure what point you're trying to make.

[superdug]

It's an amazing accomplishment that we'll see the benefits of for centuries. The culmination of a free operating system on free hardware that is.

[ur-whale]

Thanks for the summary, the original text makes more sense with that as context.

[xyproto]

Usually when people feel like this, it is because the text has been generated by a LLM.

[alexeldeib]

What makes you think it’s an LLM? It made fine sense to me, it’s just an odd style

[lproven]

> It made fine sense to me,

"Fine sense"? Even that isn't a standard phrase.

I doubt you, TBH.

Each paragraph barely coheres.

Examples:

> an entirely ideological win

What does that mean?

> there is a fully documented dearth of information

... is nonsensical.

> a mere quandary of any part of the system

More nonsense.

> in the completely free entirety of information available until time itself forgets it

... wut?

> adopt there new role

Benefit of the doubt: typo

Doesn't make sense even fixed, though.

> segregated fully autonomous systems loosely networked together

... wut?

> the same status that all 99th percentile that all previous technology

What?

> The nerds won, we made computers into a skilled labor.

Always was.

This is word salad. If you scan very hastily and you're not good at skimming -- and writing online for 10s to 100s of thousands of readers a day has taught me that many people can't skim to save their lives but they don't know that they can't -- it may look superficially like coherent English text, but it isn't.

[alexeldeib]

tbh, on re-read I agree it's awkward, but to take some of the bait:

>> an entirely ideological win

> What does that mean?

ideological win makes sense. what's an entirely ideological win? one without non-ideological impact.

>> there is a fully documented dearth of information

> ... is nonsensical.

disagree. it is entirely sensical for a dearth of information about a well-defined topic to be documented. see: every github issue for project documentation ever.

[lproven]

Huh.

Well, OK then. @superdug keeps posting and responding and seems to be acting like a human, so maybe it's just me.

There is a chap in the Hitchhiker's Guide fan club who I've known online for >20Y who is a native English speaker, but his comments and posts online read almost like bot-generated text. Most of them, I have to ask him to explain, often 3 or 4 times, until he can produce something coherent to other humans. His grammar and spelling are perfectly fine but his mind works weirdly and he writes about references to passing thoughts that occurred to him and is not able to recognise that others do not share those random associations. Some of my friends have got so irritated with it, they've just blocked him.

Perhaps this is a case a little like that? It makes almost no sense to me, but apparently, it does to you, so maybe the failing is on my end.

[superdug]

Simply someone getting a break to philosophize about a crowning achievement in my eyes as the entire idea of free and open had yet to even be fully defined let alone on the precipice of realization four decades ago when I signed on to this free information roller coaster that changed the world.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Surely that was generated by an LLM?

Artificial indeed.

[superdug]

No, but I’ll take any moniker of intelligence at this point in my life, so thank you! If you’d like I can prove my Turing completeness if you’d like.

[cmrdporcupine]

"Fully open systems are an entirely ideological win at this point with a now sub-$50 entry point setups available today."

It's not entirely ideological. The advantage an open, license-free, RISC-V brings to the table is ISA flexibility and freedom, the ability for people to bring innovation in terms of extensions, create their own flavours.

And where we'll hopefully see this innovation is in realms like AI and graphics and vector. e.g. bringing compute back in from the GPU, by chip producers bundling extensions into their custom RISC-V implementations and then providing the requisite add-ons for llvm, SDKs, etc.

We've already seen the excellent things Apple was able to do with ARM because they had the chip under their own control and were no longer beholden to ARM^H^H^HIntel (or Motorola/IBM before that). I am hopeful we'll see similar excellence around RISC-V. (EDIT: I had typo'd "ARM" here but meant to write Intel)

Though this will all come at the cost of some amount of fragmentation, at least the base instruction set is standardized, and a standard method for extension put in place.

[klelatti]

> We've already seen the excellent things Apple was able to do with ARM because they had the chip under their own control and were no longer beholden to ARM (or Motorola/IBM before that).

Sorry? Apple remains an Arm licensee and everything they have done will be consistent with the terms of their license.

[cmrdporcupine]

Oh, just noticed I'd written "with ARM" when I meant to write Intel when talking about Apple being beholden. Fixed.

My understanding is Apple has an architectural license, broader than what some other licensees have, and it permits them to make architectural changes that people without that license cannot. And while I don't know the current business terms of this, I would speculate that by them being part of the original joint venture that created ARM in the first place they have at least some remaining better pricing on that than others would?

In any case, correct me if I'm wrong on that... but there's also the fact that by controlling the whole software stack Apple is also able to initiate changes that would be difficult for any other hardware vendor.

[klelatti]

Ah Ok. Agree with the amended version!

FWIW I think it’s unlikely that being a founder has any impact on current terms - we’re now thirty years on and several new licenses on now. Being a huge high profile customer will have an impact so Apple can probably get better terms than if you or me tried to buy an architecture license!

[panick21_]

Apple had to pay a lot for that license and even if you are willing to pay its not that easy to get. And if you do pay, you are not actually allowed resell the licenses for that chip.

RISC-V gives all people a level of power that is even higher then what Apple had with ARM.

As somebody from Esperanto said when making their Esperanto said it. If we had asked ARM it would have been 'pay of a couple million and then you can't do X,Y and Z'.

[klelatti]

I really don't get this sort of take : the world's most valuable company and a startup backed with $100m+ shouldn't have to pay for the IP that they use? Will Esperanto be giving their IP away for free and letting other firms do what they want with it?

Sure RISC-V is great in many, many ways but having the 64-bit Arm ISA ready for Apple to use in (checks notes) 2013 has been fundamental to them building their multi-trillion dollar business. Getting that ISA ready cost real money.

[panick21_]

> shouldn't have to pay for the IP that they use

They don't want actual ARM IP. They only want the ISA. Its questionable if ISA design should be protected.

To get an architectural license its millions, do you think its reasonable to pay millions just for an ISA specification?

And even with that specification, there would be lots of restrictions still.

Listen to Jim Keller on the topic, there are also other issues with how slow developments are. Lots of companies are already out with accelerators that don't even have an official ARM spec yet.

> Sure RISC-V is great in many, many ways but having the 64-bit Arm ISA ready for Apple to use in (checks notes) 2013 has been fundamental to them building their multi-trillion dollar business. Getting that ISA ready cost real money.

That's nice and all for ARM and Apple.

But now we are in the future where an open standard exists. Once you move to an open standard you don't go back very often.