alt Hacker News> […] then the CPU vendors can optimize on one side […]
I find the statement ironic and somewhat amusing (or bemusing – depending on the perspective) for reasons entirely unrelated to CPU's and/or RISC-V.
I keep hearing the phrase «we shall leave that to the vendors» every now and then. Only a few days ago, whilst attending a working-group session on an emerging data exchange standard, precisely the very much same argument was bluntly stated: «We do not particularly care how complex the specification becomes because the vendors will implement it. We shall leave it to them».
The issue is that «the vendors» are not a single mythical intelligence or force possessed of infinite technical wisdom, unlimited, cosmic scale engineering resources and an relentless desire to right the wrongs.
They are businesses. They have narrow commercial objectives, conflicting priorities, disparities in the engineering talent and resourcing and, quite properly, incentives to advance their own products – you are right, to compete with other vendors. Where an opportunity appears to increase market share, lock customers in, differentiate their platforms and products or shift implementation burden elsewhere, one should expect them to notice it. It is not an accusation, it is merely an acknowledgement that vendors tend to behave like vendors.
So with «the vendors will do X», at best, we may hope that vendors will deliver an interpretation of the specification – to a degree, provided that doing so aligns sufficiently well with their commercial interests. An equally plausible outcome is that they will not – or that they will each implement mutually incompatible interpretations whilst proclaiming full compliance.
> I find the statement ironic,
What you find may or may not match reality. In this instance, I don't believe it does.
> We do not particularly care how complex the specification becomes because the vendors will implement it. We shall leave it to them.
This, of course, is a silly argument. Yet, it is completely orthogonal to the one I was making, and is 180 degrees away from the complaints leveled at Risc-V which are that it is an overly simplistic, nay childish, specification, written in crayon by kindergartners.
> The issue is that «the vendors» are not a single mythical intelligence or force possessed of infinite technical wisdom, unlimited, cosmic scale engineering resources and an relentless desire to right the wrongs.
I find this statement accurate, yet condescending. Who the fuck thinks that they are? Claiming that this is an "issue" with my statement appears to be a reductive argument that I have not thought it through. To be blunt, this statement reveals a hell of a lot more about your ignorance on this issue than mine.
> It is not an accusation, it is merely an acknowledgement that vendors tend to behave like vendors.
And yet, we have seen this play out in x86, with Intel v. AMD, and it worked exceptionally well.
> An equally plausible outcome is that they will not – or that they will each implement mutually incompatible interpretations whilst proclaiming full compliance.
Of course, AMD and Intel were always trying to one-up each other, but that is tempered by the necessity for their improvements to be supported by compilers. By the time an improvement is well-supported, the other side has caught up.
With Risc-V this is even more likely to be the case, because proprietary extensions will simply not be that well supported by major compiler vendors, who have a hard enough time keeping up with the ratified ones.