Red Hat Joins the RISC-V Foundation | Hacker News Reader

Red Hat Joins the RISC-V Foundation

phoronix.com

74 pointstoun18 comments

By the transitive property, does this mean that IBM joins as well? And if yes, does this have any implications on them? I don't know if IBM still designs their own chips.

IBM still designs both their Power (think Linux/big server) and Z (mainframe) chips.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_POWER_microprocessors

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture

A RISC-V mainframe would be an interesting and funny outcome.

Only after RISC-V has gone through the same evolution as x86 and ARM and renamed itself CISC-V. :)

Hey now, ARM managed to keep their "R".

Yeah, but only because ACM was already taken. ;)

Z Architecture??? "These aren't even declassified yet!"

Not quite.

Here's the latest principles of operation:

http://publibfp.dhe.ibm.com/epubs/pdf/dz9zr011.pdf

And the architecture reference summary:

http://publibfp.dhe.ibm.com/epubs/pdf/dz9zs009.pdf

It was a reference to the movie Pi :) "It's a Ming Mecca chip! Those aren't even declassified yet!"

Applied Phlebotinum: The "Ming Mecca" computer chip that Dawson uses to bait Max, and provides Euclid the processing power to fully realize the number. Max is disbelieving that the firm can even provide it (because they're classified technology), but Dawson simply says that the firm has plenty of connections. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Pi

But in seriousness. Thanks for the links. Also I didn't know there is that much indepth information about IBM mainframes on Wikipedia. Don't mind if I do, this will be a late night!

IBM has been a member of the RISC-V Foundation for a few years. (https://riscv.org/membership/1456/ibm/)

What's the rationale for double-paying?

Silver membership is $5000/year so it's like one developer's salary in a month in total (to set that in context, this is a company with a third of a million employees). This was set in motion long before the acquisition was even announced let alone completed.

Maybe this?

> All Sponsor organizations have one vote per open position in Board elections.

https://riscv.org/membership-application/

I would personally favour rwmj's explanation though.

Maybe IBM acquired Red Hat in order to join RISC-V by proxy.

Got to save on the $5k.

Thank you both for a good laugh.

They're just trying to onion route their support so upper management doesn't catch on.

Needs more layers I think.

Much more likely they just want to get one extra vote.

Nobody would've objected to a company with RedHat's profile joining.

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