this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
641 points (98.9% liked)

Linux

48746 readers
936 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The advantages that we'll see come from the implementation more than the spec, but having an open standard for the ISA allows more companies to make implementations and to innovate.

The true benefits will be ~10 years in, when RISCV chip designers are more experienced and have had time to innovate and build good IP blocks.

E.g. companies that make ARM SoCs are pick'n mix'ing IP from ARM, and adding their own special sauce on top. The future in RISCV comes from having many companies that compete to make intercompatible IP, which hardware vendors like Qualcomm and Rockchip can then licence to make SoCs out of.

There is benefit to RISCV, over ARM but mostly that comes down to:

  • not having legacy compatibility to maintain.
  • having a frozen spec that is less likely to slowly get feature creep like x86 & ARM.
  • having hindsight for things like vector extension implementations & macro-op fusion.