In a new front in the U.S.-China tech war, President Joe Biden's administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to restrict American companies from working on a freely available chip technology widely used in China - a move that could upend how the global technology industry collaborates across borders.
  • ono@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Why does ARM hardware become obsolete after a few years? Lacking ongoing software support and no mainline Linux?

    Correct. (And firmware support.)

    What does that have to do with the instruction set license?

    Barrier to entry (cost) and license restrictions (non-disclosure) are generally problematic for anyone wanting to ship open hardware.

    If you think RISC-V implementors who actually make the damn chips won’t ship locked hardware that only run signed and encrypted binary blobs, you are in for a disappointing ride.

    I don’t think anyone expects existing ARM device makers to change their behavior with RISC-V. Rather, RISC-V opens the door to new players who do things differently.