
Venus – RISC-V Simulator - steven741
https://thaumicmekanism.github.io/venus/
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noxa
Would be cool if the editor came with some samples so that I could check out
all the features of the tool (like 8bitworkshop.com).

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steven741
There are labs for UC Berekely's CS61C course that use venus. They're good
starting points for playing with the simulator.

[http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61c/fa18/labs/3/](http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61c/fa18/labs/3/)
[http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61c/fa18/labs/5/](http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61c/fa18/labs/5/)
[http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61c/fa18/labs/6/](http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61c/fa18/labs/6/)

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glenrivard
I am older and seen a lot of tech come and go. RISC-V feels to me like
something that will be huge.

There is so much momentum already. Not many things catch on that quick. But
when they do they end up huge.

~~~
gchadwick
It's worth noting the age of RISC-V, according to Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V))
it originated as a 'short, three-month project over the summer' in 2010. So ~8
and a bit years old. It's taken a while to really take-off but now it does
really seem to be picking up momentum. Though no serious use in production
hardware that I'm aware of.

Perhaps a good comparison point is LLVM. It too originated as an academic
project. Again looking at Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM)) it
started development in 2000, first release 2003, Lattner hired by Apple to
develop it 2005, Clang released by Apple 2007 (so ~7 years from initial LLVM
creation to serious production use potentially less depends when Apple were
using it internally).

~~~
bunnycorn
You can't really compare hardware with software.

It's just a question of opportunity for change.

RISC-V while take on when there's a reason to not use ARM and if it's better
than the competition (eg: MIPS).

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monocasa
> RISC-V while take on when there's a reason to not use ARM and if it's better
> than the competition (eg: MIPS).

No licensing fees.

~~~
bunnycorn
But your company will need to pay more in R&D to develop the cores.

Most companies license ARM cores, not the ISA.

~~~
monocasa
Not really, the foundries are on the cusp of fully validating rocket cores on
the various processes, and you can just include them in your design like you
would a Cortex-M or Cortex-R. They've recognized that 3-5 stage classic RISC
cores are a commodity market now, and it's in their best interest to make it
as easy as possible to add to your design.

Above those simple cores, we should expect to see more and more RISC-V cores
hit the same level of "just drop it in for no licensing, already validated,
the pieces like register files are already optimized for the process". BOOM is
~Cortex-A9 perf/gatecount/IPC, which puts it into greater than RPi territory
(usable, but not really out crazy). There's still work to be done on the
higher end still, albeit, but it's not like you can just go out and licence
the highest perf ARM cores anyway (those are Apple's).

ARM has an existential threat, IMO.

