In the 21st century, chips are like water and air in the real world, maintaining people's "electronic lifeline" - it is like the oil of industrial society, the blood and lifeline of the information society.
It is essential in life: from mobile phones, personal computers, electronics and communication products, to automobiles, cloud computing , satellite navigation and space station , chip computing and intelligent computing capabilities, enrich people's lives, improve work efficiency, and promote social development.
It continues to bring technological progress: since 1965, " Moore's Law " has been proposed - about every two years, the number of transistors that can be accommodated on integrated circuits has doubled. It is known as the first law of computers, promoting the development of chip processes, driving a series of scientific and technological innovations, social reforms, improvement of production efficiency and economic growth. At present, two major chip architectures, CPU ( central processor ) and GPU (graphics processor), have ushered in a "new golden age of computer architecture."
In the 1980s, RISC (Simplified Instruction Set Computer) was born, making chip instruction sets more concise and efficient.
has been in the 40 years since its establishment, from the initial battle between RISC and CISC (complex instruction set computers), to the prosperity of RISC, from the differences between closed and open source, to the emergence of RISC-V, 99% of CPU processors are currently using RISC.
RISC has emerged in the new mobile Internet market and is heading towards a 100-fold future market. It has also become one of the most important keywords in the future computer field. In the near future, the first exhibition of this important invention will meet citizens in Shenzhen.
In October this year, the 40th anniversary exhibition of RISC streamlined instruction set computers hosted by Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen RISC-V International Open Source Laboratory (RIOS Laboratory) will be opened in the Shenzhen Industrial Exhibition Hall. The exhibition has received strong support from RISC founder Professor David Patterson and the Computer History Museum. It has rich exhibits and precious historical materials, and also brings audiences the opportunity to get close contact with RISC products.
RISC The second generation chip
From history to the future, from scenes within reach in life to the attention of the academic and industrial circles, and then to the huge potential of the future, the magnificent picture since the birth of RISC has slowly unfolded, calling on people to enter the Shenzhen Industrial Exhibition Hall and witness the RISC-V instruction set that will surely change the future.
Personally experience the major inventions in the chip industry
Just like Linux in the software field and Tcp/IP in the Internet field, RISC-V is known as one of the historical milestones of computers.
This exhibition reviews the major invention of two winners of the highest award in the computer field, the Turing Award winners - for the invention of the RISC streamlining instruction set architecture computer, the American Computer Association (ACM) awarded the 2017 Turing Award to two superstars in the computer architecture field David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy.
Some of the honorary trophys received by Professor David Patterson
They then co-authored the paper "A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture" which has a far-reaching influence in the academic and industry, explaining how computing performance can achieve another ascendance. At the 40th anniversary exhibition of RISC, Professor Patterson's manuscripts will appear for the first time when RISC was invented, and audiences can see the origin of this major invention. In addition, this exhibition will lead the audience through the 40-year journey of RISC, bringing the debut of exhibits at the Silicon Valley Computer History Museum in Asia, and showing multiple categories of RISC products and application scenarios to depict future trends. When
RISC was born, it faced difficulties such as complex instruction set (CISC) causing continuous increase in hardware R&D costs and longer R&D cycles. However, CISC has many mature products and supporters.This wonderful debate was replicated in this exhibition. Visitors can experience the challenges and achievements RISC faced along the way through the carefully designed historical corridor:
In the first decade, Professor David Patterson innovatively proposed the concept of streamlining instruction sets for the first time. The first RISC chip streaming was successful, showing a major advantage and shocked the industry. In this process, many well-known instruction set architectures emerged in the industry, including the Sun SPARC developed by Hennessy under the guidance of Professor Patterson, who was founded by , Stanford University, and Professor Patterson.
In addition to the founder of MIPS technology company, Hennessy is also the tenth president of Stanford University and the chairman of Google parent company Alphabet . He and Professor Patterson co-authored the "Computer Architecture: Quantitative Research Methods" in 1990, which is known as the "Architecture Bible". So far, he has updated six editions and cultivated and directed countless processor design talents.
In the second decade, RISC architecture has been brilliant, and RISC chips used for commercialization have entered the market, including DEC Alpha, which is academically considered to be relatively successful, MIPS written into classic textbooks, Sun SPARC, which pursues thread-level parallelism, and high-performance Power, as well as ARM instruction set developed based on RISC. This is also an important instruction set that will monopolize into a mobile terminal in the future.
In the third decade, RISC architecture has gradually become the mainstream. In 2007, the iPhone was born and opened the mobile Internet era dominated by ARM. In 2021, the global ARM processor shipments reached 29.2 billion yuan each year, making it the dominant architecture in the fields of smartphones, digital TVs, etc.
In the fourth decade, the fifth-generation instruction set of the revolutionary open source chip project RISC-V was born at the University of Berkeley, California, and its open source features drive it to develop rapidly. With the help of the open source ecosystem, accelerate industrial innovation and commercial applications and usher in a new golden age of rapid improvement in cost, energy, security and performance.
Berkeley is the birthplace of many famous world-class open source projects. Professor Patterson also continues to promote the development of the fifth-generation RISC architecture RISC-V.
Today, Shenzhen and Berkeley are at the forefront of the high-tech industry - the United States has the origin of computer inventions and technological innovations; China has developed the largest market and industrial foundation, and the two sides have formed a global supply chain relationship with open competition and cooperation, ecological complementarity, accompanied by two forty-year innovation stories that are inspiring and mutually beneficial.
It is worth mentioning that this exhibition also received strong support from the Museum of Computer History, which is the "holy land" of the world's IT, and provides several RISC-related historical exhibits. The Museum of Computer History was founded in 1996. Many original machines and models unique in computer history gathered here, with landmark great inventions and building a unique world. According to incomplete statistics, the museum currently has more than 3,500 "prehistoric antiques" (of course for computer history), more than 3,000 rolls of film and video tapes, more than 5,000 photos and more than 3,500 classified catalogs. It brings together 19 innovative processes in which human primitive computing ideas evolved to cloud computing and computer development.
In addition to historical review, the exhibition also invited Feet , Adeno, ZTE Microelectronics, Great Wall, Zhongsoft and other companies to exhibit their RISC products, including development boards, chips, etc. The audience can witness the wide application of RISC instruction sets in chips and the ubiquitous position of chips in life;
At the outer edge of the exhibition, interactive products such as bionic cats and programmable robot arms that use RISC instruction sets will also allow the audience to "closely contact" with products based on RISC programming and experience the development of technology. The future of
RISC: the fifth generation streamlined instruction set
Another important highlight of this exhibition is the comprehensive introduction of the latest generation of RISC instruction set, that is, the fifth generation streamlined instruction set (RISC-V).
RISC-V is an open source instruction set architecture (ISA) based on the principle of streamlined instruction set computing (RISC).In 2010, David Patterson, then professor at Berkeley, led the research team to develop a new generation of instruction set based on RISC - the RISC-V architecture, and decided to open source it completely for the new project research.
RISC-V has only more than 40 basic instruction sets, which are modular, easy to expand, and independent and controllable.
open source has also become the driving force for the rapid development of this latest generation of streamlined instruction sets - RISC-V uses the BSD License open source protocol, unlike the instruction sets such as ARM and PowerPC, which require paid authorization to be used. It gives users great freedom, allows users to modify and re-publish open source code, and allows commercial software development based on open source code to be published and sold.
It is precisely because of this that RISC-V has developed rapidly since its birth and has become a three-legged stalemate with X86 and ARM.
RISC The second generation chip
The uniqueness of RIOS laboratory is also emphasized in the exhibition - RIOS is the "river" in Spanish , and it is also the meaning of RIOS laboratory. It gathers resources and intelligence from the world like a river, giving birth to and nurturing the healthy development of the RISC-V ecology.
RIOS Laboratory is the full name of Patterson RISC-V International Open Source Laboratory. Under the direct leadership of Professor David Patterson, he directly accesses the RISC-V base camp. Relying on Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI for short), he continues to promote the development of RISC-V. At the exhibition
, the chart symbolizing the river shows the development history of RIOS Laboratory. From the official unveiling in Shenzhen on November 12, 2019, to the gradual establishment of the RISC-V global innovation network with Shenzhen as the root node from the source, RIOS Laboratory is constantly cultivating the open source core ecosystem and cultivating world-class talents.
Open Source: China's Future Chip Road
Through rich forms such as videos, charts, product displays, interactions, etc., this 40th anniversary exhibition not only reflects the huge potential of RISC-V, but also reflects its crucial role in the future of Chinese chips.
First of all, its development potential is huge. In the future, it can be predicted to have a leap in its market share.
It is estimated that by 2025, the number of chips using RISC-V architecture will increase to 62.4 billion, with a compound growth rate of up to 146% from 2018 to 2025. These chips will be mainly used in the industrial market, PC, consumer electronics and communications markets, etc. Semico predicts that the CAGR of RISC-V CPU cores will have an average CAGR between 2018 and 2025.
As performance continues to rise, RISC-V chips can be used in many high-end markets and break down barriers to different processors through their high flexibility and customizability. Currently, new applications such as AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) are migrating to RISC-V.
Secondly, the open source characteristics of RISC-V are crucial to China - Because it is open source, free and commercially available, RISC-V can break the technology blockade in the chip field and become an important driving technology for China's chip development.
2021 In the "Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and the Long-Term Goals for 2035 ", China clearly stated for the first time that "open source" would be included in the five-year development plan. As shown by many Chinese companies at the exhibition, RISC with open source characteristics allows Chinese companies to show their strengths in this ecosystem. ; During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, we will support the development of innovative consortiums such as digital technology open source community, improve the open source intellectual property and legal system, and encourage enterprises to open software source code, hardware design and application services. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and other places provide policy tilts for RISC-V or include them in key development directions.
From the controversy at birth to accelerated evolution and continuous iteration, this exhibition reviews RISC’s 40 years of history, and also reflects the spirit of seeking truth, reality and constantly pursuing technological breakthroughs in the computer field.
With the global expansion of RISC-V, this open source, streamlined and beautiful instruction set will surely bring more innovation, more freedom and more breakthroughs to the chip field; inject new vitality into the Chinese chip field, and an excellent opportunity to overtake in the chip field.
