By adding a bunch of IP blocks that do stuff the open ISA doesn't, like peripherals or multicore processing. It also helps if you can make it high throughout, low latency, or low power by adjusting some "knobs".
The HN article title suggests a contradiction where there isn't one. The instruction set is just the spec -- the high-level contract that the silicon must implement, with many important details like cycle counts per instruction left unspecified. It implies very little about how you would actually implement the inner workings, which could be done in an almost infinite number of different ways (including simulating them on some completely different architecture). Compare "How do you sell a calculator design when the rules of arithmetic are free?"
The credibility point is the most interesting part of this. In semiconductors, having a good design seems secondary to convincing customers that you'll still be around to support it years later. RISC-V lowers the barrier to building a CPU, but i'm not sure it lowers the trust barrier nearly as much.
>"Founding a company is a confidence game in the honest sense of the phrase: you have to get people to believe in something before it’s true, and then go make it true."
An absolutely spot-on observation about the true nature of Silicon Valley, Venture Capital, Angel Investors, Tech Incubators and the whole surrounding early-investment (high risk, high financial reward if successful) ecosystem...
7 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 83.3 ms ] threadI was pleasantly surprised it's a startup done by two of my conationals.
- if you wanted to build a 1nm process cpu from scratch without china and taiwan, where do you start
- what do you need?
- what is the timespan
- how much money?
- what kind of expertise?
An absolutely spot-on observation about the true nature of Silicon Valley, Venture Capital, Angel Investors, Tech Incubators and the whole surrounding early-investment (high risk, high financial reward if successful) ecosystem...