RISC-V: An Open Standard for SoCs
The case for an open ISA
Systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), where the processors and caches are a small part of the chip, are becoming ubiquitous. Thus many more companies today are making chips that include processors than in the past. Given that the industry has been revolutionized by open standards and open-source software -- like TCP/IP and Linux -- why is one of the most important interfaces proprietary?
While instruction set architectures (ISAs) may be proprietary for historical or business reasons, there is no good technical reason for the lack of free, open ISAs.
It's not an error of omission. Companies with successful ISAs like ARM, IBM, Intel, and MIPS have patents on quirks of their ISAs, which prevent others from using them without licenses that academia and many small companies can't afford. Even IBM's OpenPower is an oxymoron; you must pay IBM to use its ISA.
To read the full article, click here
Related Semiconductor IP
- Flexible Pixel Processor Video IP
- Bluetooth Low Energy 6.0 Digital IP
- Ultra-low power high dynamic range image sensor
- Neural Video Processor IP
- Flash Memory LDPC Decoder IP Core
Related Blogs
- RISC-V: An Open Standard - Backed by a Global Community - to Enable Open Computing for All
- Have you checked the hidden costs of deploying an open source RISC-V core?
- Closing the Gap in SoC Open Standards with RISC-V
- LPDDR6: A New Standard and Memory Choice for AI Data Center Applications
Latest Blogs
- What It Will Take to Build a Resilient Automotive Compute Ecosystem
- The Blind Spot of Semiconductor IP Sales
- Scalable I/O Virtualization: A Deep Dive into PCIe’s Next Gen Virtualization
- UEC-LLR: The Future of Loss Recovery in Ethernet for AI and HPC
- Trust at the Core: A Deep Dive into Hardware Root of Trust (HRoT)