RISC-V在快速发展的处理器生态系统中找到立足点

原文：RISC-V Finds Its Foothold in a Rapidly Evolving Processor Ecosystem

作者：Agam Shah

转载自：https://thenewstack.io/risc-v-finds-its-foothold-in-a-rapidly-evolving-processor-ecosystem/

以下是正文

But the open source processor architecture will need to find more support from the software dev community before it can rival x86 and ARM architectures in the data center: A wrap-up of RISC-V Summit in Barcelona.

但是开源处理器架构需要从软件开发社区获得更多支持，然后才能在数据中心与x86和ARM架构竞争：巴塞罗那RISC-V峰会的总结。

Developers have grown up hearing ARM or x86 being the guts of PCs and servers, but an alternative architecture called RISC-V is emerging.

开发人员听说ARM或x86是PC和服务器的内脏，但一种名为RISC-V的替代架构正在出现。

In the next few years, some companies will inevitably ship PCs and servers running on RISC-V processors. Those systems will likely run on Linux as Microsoft is not known to be developing a Windows OS for the architecture.

在接下来的几年里，一些公司将不可避免地出货运行在RISC-V处理器上的PC和服务器。这些系统可能会在Linux上运行，因为不知道Microsoft正在为该架构开发Windows操作系统。

But there are big problems with the software ecosystem — the developer support is pitiful. RISC-V International, which is developing the chip architecture, talks more about hardware, with software a distant second in priorities.

但是软件生态系统存在很大的问题——开发人员的支持是可怜的。正在开发芯片架构的RISC-V International更多地谈论硬件，软件在优先级上遥遥领先。

Initial Support

Since its emergence close to a decade ago, RISC-V quickly gained the support of major chip makers, including Apple, which has put controllers in its Apple Silicon. About 10 billion chip cores based on RISC-V have shipped. Most recently, Meta announced an AI inferencing chip built on RISC-V architecture.

自近十年前出现以来，RISC-V迅速获得了主要芯片制造商的支持，包括苹果公司，苹果公司已将控制器置于其苹果硅中。基于RISC-V的芯片内核已经出货了大约10亿个。最近，Meta 宣布推出一款基于 RISC-V 架构的 AI 推理芯片。

The chip architecture is often called a hardware equivalent of Linux. It is a free chip technology built on a contributor culture and the ethos of open source, in which a community works together to develop and improve the product.

芯片架构通常被称为Linux的硬件等价物。它是一种建立在贡献者文化和开源精神之上的免费芯片技术，其中社区共同努力开发和改进产品。

RISC-V is a free-to-license architecture, which means anyone can fork a version of the architecture into their own chip.

RISC-V是一种免费许可的架构，这意味着任何人都可以将架构的一个版本分叉到自己的芯片中。

Chips with RISC-V can be compiled like Lego blocks — companies that take the base architecture, and top it off with proprietary hardware blocks that may include accelerators for AI, graphics, or security.

带有RISC-V的芯片可以像乐高积木一样编译 - 采用基本架构的公司，并使用专有硬件块进行编译，这些硬件模块可能包括用于AI，图形或安全的加速器。

“What was once an experiment, a prototype, is quickly moving into production,” said Calista Redmond, during a keynote at last month’s RISC-V Summit in Barcelona.

“曾经是一个实验，一个原型，正在迅速投入生产，”Calista Redmond在上个月在巴塞罗那举行的RISC-V峰会上发表主题演讲时说。

The structure of RISC-V makes it suitable for cloud native environments handling diverse applications and complex computing requirements.

RISC-V的结构使其适用于处理各种应用程序和复杂计算需求的云原生环境。

The minimal base instructions are designed to quickly offload applications such as AI and analytics to accelerators like GPUs or specialized math processors, which excel at such tasks.

最小基本指令旨在将 AI 和分析等应用程序快速卸载到 GPU 或专用数学处理器等加速器，这些加速器擅长此类任务。

Chips from Intel and AMD are reaching their physical limits, and the flexibility of RISC-V provides a structure to move computing into the future.

英特尔和AMD的芯片正在达到其物理极限，RISC-V的灵活性提供了一种将计算推向未来的结构。

For example, RISC-V provides a pathway for new hardware architectures such as sparse computing, which is being researched by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, in which processing units are closer to the data in storage or memory.

例如，RISC-V为稀疏计算等新硬件架构提供了一条途径，该架构正在由智能高级研究项目活动进行研究，其中处理单元更接近存储或内存中的数据。

The Barcelona Supercomputing Centre proposed the concept of merging CPU and memory in a RISC-V chip, which will reduce the memory bottleneck posed by machine-learning applications.

巴塞罗那超级计算中心提出了将CPU和内存合并到RISC-V芯片中的概念，这将减少机器学习应用程序带来的内存瓶颈。

“What we want from it — it is actually to do memory-intensive operations close to memory, like memcpy,” said Umair Riaz, a researcher at BSC, referring to the C++ function to copy memory blocks. Riaz also referenced the spinlock function, and mentioned the CPU executing those in memory will be more efficient and faster.

“我们想要从中得到的 - 它实际上是在内存附近进行内存密集型操作，就像memcpy一样，”BSC的研究员Umair Riaz说，他指的是复制内存块的C++功能。Riaz还提到了自旋锁函数，并提到在内存中执行这些函数的CPU将更高效，更快。

“Executing functions locally you will eventually get performance and less [network] traffic because you are doing much more closer to memory,” Riaz said.

“在本地执行功能，你最终将获得性能和更少的[网络]流量，因为你做得更接近内存，”Riaz说。

Writing applications for such complicated RISC-V chips may be a load for even the bravest programmers that want to code directly to the hardware. But Intel wants to provide the tooling needed for coders to start testing applications in simulated RISC-V environments.

为如此复杂的RISC-V芯片编写应用程序对于想要直接对硬件进行编码的最勇敢的程序员来说也可能是一种负担。但英特尔希望提供编码人员在模拟RISC-V环境中开始测试应用程序所需的工具。

OneAPI

Intel’s Codeplay software unit recently announced the OneAPI Construction Kit, which includes tools for developers to test code in a simulated RISC-V environment on x86 PCs.

英特尔的Codeplay软件部门最近发布了OneAPI构建套件，其中包括供开发人员在x86 PC上的模拟RISC-V环境中测试代码的工具。

The Construction Kit’s signature feature is support for SYCL — which allows coders to write and compile applications regardless of the hardware architecture — and Intel is taking the first steps to bring RISC-V support to the parallel-programming framework.

该构建套件的标志性功能是支持 SYCL，它允许编码人员编写和编译应用程序，而不管硬件架构如何，英特尔正在迈出第一步，将 RISC-V 支持引入并行编程框架。

The kit includes support for Intel’s DPC++/C++ Compiler, which allows C++ code to be recompiled for use across multiple hardware architectures.

该套件包括对英特尔 DPC++/C++ 编译器的支持，该编译器允许重新编译C++代码以跨多个硬件架构使用。

Developers can also test RISC-V code on Raspberry Pi-like developer boards or systems from companies such as Milk-V, and StarFive. Both companies offer high-performance 64-bit RISC-V systems with support for Linux.

开发人员还可以在类似Raspberry Pi的开发板或Milk-V和StarFive等公司的系统上测试RISC-V代码。两家公司都提供支持Linux的高性能64位RISC-V系统。

Support for Linux tools on RISC-V are tepid. Only a handful of packages are fully supported, and that includes Ubuntu OS, Gnu Toolchain, OpenvSwitch, Apache Nuttx, and Spidermonkey for Mozilla.

RISC-V上对Linux工具的支持不温不火。只有少数软件包完全支持，其中包括Ubuntu OS，Gnu Toolchain，OpenvSwitch，Apache Nuttx和Mozilla的Spidermonkey。

Many packages for RISC-V will work reasonably well, but are still not fully supported. For example, the RISC-V developer community in China reported that more than 80% of the packages in open source Fedora are now supported on RISC-V,

RISC-V的许多软件包可以很好地工作，但仍然没有完全支持。例如，中国的RISC-V开发者社区报告说，开源Fedora中超过80%的软件包现在在RISC-V上得到了支持。

Some key packages, such as Pytorch, GCC, TensorFlow, and OpenJDK will work, but are not yet fully supported. Support for open source applications like LibreOffice and Firefox are being built up. Google is accelerating its support of AOSP (Android Open Source Project) on RISC-V, which will be a big part of the next architecture specification.

一些关键包，如Pytorch，GCC，TensorFlow和OpenJDK可以工作，但尚未完全支持。对LibreOffice和Firefox等开源应用程序的支持正在建立中。谷歌正在加速在RISC-V上支持AOSP（Android开源项目），这将是下一个架构规范的重要组成部分。

RISC-V server chip makers Esperanto Technologies and Ventana Micro Systems have announced server chips for cloud computing, but have not talked much about software support or programming models. Esperanto has ported Meta’s Open Pre-Trained Transformer model to its RISC-V server.

RISC-V服务器芯片制造商Esperanto Technologies和Ventana Micro Systems已经宣布了用于云计算的服务器芯片，但没有过多谈论软件支持或编程模型。Esperanto 已将 Meta 的开放预训练变压器模型移植到其 RISC-V 服务器上。

RISC-V International, which is developing the architectural spec, is trying to solve that problem with the establishment of the RISC-V Software Ecosystem, also called RISE, to create the underlying software tools and middleware for RISC-V systems. The initial backers include companies such as Google, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Ventana.

正在开发架构规范的RISC-V国际公司正试图通过建立RISC-V软件生态系统（也称为RISE）来解决这个问题，为RISC-V系统创建底层软件工具和中间件。最初的支持者包括谷歌、英特尔、英伟达、高通、三星和文塔纳等公司。

Mark Himelstein, chief technology officer RISC-V International, at the summit talked about RISC-V taking a page from the cultural roots of Linux culture, with contributors contributing to the shared interests.

RISC-V International首席技术官Mark Himelstein在峰会上谈到了RISC-V从Linux文化的文化根源出发，贡献者为共同的利益做出了贡献。

“That contributor culture means upstreaming on RISC-V and other communities where open source and open standards play a part,” Himelstein said, adding “that does not mean you are working on the pieces of the puzzle that are rapidly commoditizing.”

“这种贡献者文化意味着在RISC-V和其他开源和开放标准发挥作用的社区上游，”Himelstein说，并补充说，“这并不意味着你正在研究正在迅速商品化的拼图。

There is also no structure for hardware and software co-design that makes it easier for coders to use x86 and ARM systems. RISC-V first develops a hardware spec and Linux compatibility comes later. That is very different than Intel, which upstreams Linux drivers for a chip before it is released, which ensures the hardware is compatible with the latest build of the OS.

硬件和软件协同设计也没有结构，使编码人员更容易使用 x86 和 ARM 系统。RISC-V首先开发硬件规范，Linux兼容性稍后出现。这与英特尔非常不同，英特尔在芯片发布之前上游Linux驱动程序，确保硬件与最新版本的操作系统兼容。

China, Tho

RISC-V’s software efforts also lack a force of nature like Linus Torvalds that can drive a project forward by sheer will. RISC-V also is not mainstream enough to attract an army of developers.

RISC-V的软件工作也缺乏像Linus Torvalds那样的自然力量，这种力量可以通过纯粹的意志推动项目向前发展。RISC-V也不够主流，无法吸引大量开发人员。

But it is a different scene with China, which is adopting RISC-V on a massive scale to create homegrown chips and reduce its reliance on Western technology. Developers in China are rolling up their sleeves and contributing coding to stand-up RISC-V compatible operating systems for Linux.

但与中国的情况不同，中国正在大规模采用RISC-V来制造本土芯片并减少对西方技术的依赖。中国的开发人员正在卷起袖子，为Linux的RISC-V兼容操作系统贡献编码。

Their motivation is simple — an engineering focus is driving China’s RISC-V initiative, not politics, and there is plenty of motivation for developers to build OS support, especially with the latest Western chip technology out of sight due to export restrictions.

他们的动机很简单——工程重点正在推动中国的RISC-V计划，而不是政治，开发人员有足够的动力来构建操作系统支持，尤其是在由于出口限制而看不到最新的西方芯片技术的情况下。

Chinese companies are developing some of the most sophisticated RISC-V chips, and the community is adding support for more packages daily. Many of the core contributors to Fedora, Debian, Gentoo and Arch Linux, GNU toolchain, and Clang are in China.

中国公司正在开发一些最先进的RISC-V芯片，社区每天都在增加对更多封装的支持。Fedora、Debian、Gentoo 和 Arch Linux、GNU 工具链和 Clang 的许多核心贡献者都在中国。

The RISC-V community in China is also leading a grassroots effort to bring support for ROCm — which is AMD’s parallel-programming framework — to RISC-V processors. AMD did not respond to requests for comment on whether it was involved in porting ROCm to RISC-V.

中国的RISC-V社区也在领导一项基层工作，将ROCm（AMD的并行编程框架）的支持引入RISC-V处理器。AMD没有回应有关其是否参与将ROCm移植到RISC-V的评论请求。