Wow, already they did something. But generally, as an EU citizen and tax payer, good to push money into this... if they let it be fabbed in Europe too that's how you really keep IP within your grasp, no trade wars needed. Just don't fab in China and all's good.

fantaskarsef:

Wow, already they did something. But generally, as an EU citizen and tax payer, good to push money into this... if they let it be fabbed in Europe too that's how you really keep IP within your grasp, no trade wars needed. Just don't fab in China and all's good.

As an EU tax payer I would never want my money to be invested in something that is not open-source, in which case the point is precisely to not keep IP within your grasp so that everyone can benefit from it. Seeing as how this is based on RISC-V, the end result will most likely be open-source.

fantaskarsef:

Wow, already they did something. But generally, as an EU citizen and tax payer, good to push money into this... if they let it be fabbed in Europe too that's how you really keep IP within your grasp, no trade wars needed. Just don't fab in China and all's good.

Does Europe have any fabs that they can use? The only European country to my knowledge ready to manufacture mass-produced wafers with modern node sizes is Ireland, and that facility is owned by Intel. I know there have been GloFo facilities in Germany but I'm not sure how up-to-date their water tech is. Neither company is European-owned, though, if I were the EU, I'd opt for GloFo.

msotirov:

As an EU tax payer I would never want my money to be invested in something that is not open-source, in which case the point is precisely to not keep IP within your grasp so that everyone can benefit from it. Seeing as how this is based on RISC-V, the end result will most likely be open-source.

Not necessarily - to my understanding, there is nothing preventing anyone from implementing their own closed-source/proprietary additions to RISC-V. It's pretty common for this to happen with open-source products. Not so much hardware, but that's because the average joe doesn't have the knowledge or resources to come up with their own processor architecture, or changes to an existing one. SPARC for example has open-source implementations but I don't know anyone who adopted it and made their own changes to it.

Ten years ago there was quimonda in portugal, producing some of best ram chips, but all mighty germany didn't want it in portugal...

I can scarcely imagine anything worse than processors designed by political oversight committees...;) It's like asking the US Congress to oversee the design of the next NASA space shuttle! ("Run for your lives--it's gonna' blow!!")

Because the there is politician billion will be lost to do a thing that already exist and will be obsolete at launch... And by the time, we are still loosing brain that go to other country because if you want money EU isn't the place to be... It s**k.

msotirov:

As an EU tax payer I would never want my money to be invested in something that is not open-source, in which case the point is precisely to not keep IP within your grasp so that everyone can benefit from it. Seeing as how this is based on RISC-V, the end result will most likely be open-source.

schmidtbag:

Does Europe have any fabs that they can use? The only European country to my knowledge ready to manufacture mass-produced wafers with modern node sizes is Ireland, and that facility is owned by Intel. I know there have been GloFo facilities in Germany but I'm not sure how up-to-date their water tech is. Neither company is European-owned, though, if I were the EU, I'd opt for GloFo.

As far as I know there is no big wafer foundry here, but to be honest, such a plant can be built. In the long run, it's still better to have even non-open source companies in the EU that do stuff like that than none at all. Not sure what would make it worse than either relying on foreign IP (right now) and fabs (right now as well). At least something can be held in the EU, if not both since if Intel can build fabs, the EU just has to have the money ready. If there's political will to do this, money was never the issue 😀

waltc3:

I can scarcely imagine anything worse than processors designed by political oversight committees...;) It's like asking the US Congress to oversee the design of the next NASA space shuttle! ("Run for your lives--it's gonna' blow!!")

You are aware the the EU puts the money in, engineers design it. Much like congress gives NASA a budget... pretty much the exact same situation, isn't it?

exascale with risc-v.. rubbish...