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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

More like "Huawei seeks to survive in the future in spite of the US squeezing them. They want to believe these other chips will let them do that."

I don't understand the tech well enough to know how much of a fairy tale or hope and a prayer strategy this is. But calling it "seeks independence" is some incredibly positive spin which makes me suspicious of the claims.

If these other chips are so good, wouldn't you go ahead and migrate to them for the actual benefits rather than researching them as a backup plan?

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Software.

There's tremendous inertia in apps which is what gave x86 an effective monopoly in the 90'es, even when superior options were available (hello Alpha). Today the situation is actually better and with RISC-V having the same memory model as Arm, porting from an Arm version is way easier (Neon code not withstanding) but it's obviously way less attractive than running running existing code.

So QWERTY keyboards all over again, basically.

"Literally every software and hardware market since computers became a commodity" all over again, you mean. They've always tended towards monopolies.

IP law is harmful to society.

> Today the situation is actually better and with RISC-V having the same memory model as Arm, porting from an Arm version is way easier (Neon code not withstanding)

It's really not any different today than it was. The memory model being similar is kinda nice, but you still need to convince the world to compile for another arch. And you need to make a CPU good enough to justify the recompile and ongoing multi-arch maintenance.

IMO it's hugely different, at least in the server space. In the 90'es _all_ servers ran on proprietary platforms (OSes and micro-architectures). To succeed with an alternative, you had to convince your OS vendor (Microsoft, Sun, ...) to port. The most famous attempt Windows NT (ran on x86, PowerPC, Alpha, and possibly more), but the effort fizzled.

Today, the MAJORITY of servers run Linux, even on Microsoft cloud platform, and a significant part of that is using primarily open source (eg. "LAMP"). If, say, RHEL supports your platform, it's fairly easy for most to move.

Yes, it's not easy to migrate, but it is _way_ easier than it used to be. Now, non-server application is a different story.

I didn't interpret "seeks independence" as positive spin at all. It's clear and obvious that they are trying to become more independent of US technologies now that they are suffering at the whims of a mercurial personality. Indeed, the article goes into detail with quotes about how their desire for RISC-V is driven by the embargo.

I think you may be reading intent into what "seeking independence" means that is not there.

A one dimensional comparison like good or bad is not how these decisions get made. Current ARM based chips are good enough for current applications. They come with massive app support and a mature ecosystem.

Given the risk of being kicked out of that ecosystem. The score tips in favor of this new technology.

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