Alibaba Cloud Gets More of Android Working On RISC-V Silicon

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Alibaba Cloud has advanced its work to port Android to the RISC-V architecture. The Chinese cloud giant has spent more than a year working on a port of the Google-spawned OS and in January 2021 showed off a GUI powered by Android 10 running on silicon designed by T-Head Semiconductor -- an Alibaba subsidiary that designs its own RISC-V chip. Alibaba Cloud has now revealed it's working on Android 12, and has integrated third-party vendor modules. The result is Android on RISC-V that's capable of playing audio and video, running Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, and driving cameras.

The company has also "enabled more system enhancement features such as core tool sets, third-party libraries and SoC board support package on RISC-V," which collectively make RISC-V a better target for Android. Another advance is successful trials of TensorFlow Lite models on RISC-V. That effort means Android on RISC-V should be capable running workloads like image and audio classification and Optical Character Recognition. Alibaba Cloud hasn't detailed whether its porting efforts are directed to any particular processor, but is keen to point out that its homegrown Xuantie C906 processor recently aced the MLPerf Tiny v0.7 benchmark -- a test applied to Internet of Things devices. The company has also pointed out that its home-grown RISC-V kit has already been employed in smart home appliances, automotive applications, and edge computing. [...] The Xuantie C906 uses Alibaba-designed cores that are -- as required for RISC-V users -- available on GitHub. When the firm has a complete version of Android on RISC-V, it "will be an important step towards China's goal of reducing its reliance on technology that other nations can control with restrictions such as trade bans," notes The Register. "As RISC-V is open source, preventing its flow to China is all but impossible."

Why bother?

[ickleberry]

Android is a sh1t locked down proprietary data-harvesting Google OS. Its usage of the Linux kernel is not enough to redeem it. Maybe they should try getting Sailfish to run on it instead

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

ARM are probably bricking it. We all remember the time they tried to smear RISC-V. If Chinese phones start using RISC-V instead of ARM, that's a big chunk of their market at risk.

Re:

[alvinrod]

It depends on what the cost for the ARM license is relative to a chip design team. Even if you can get Android ported over to RISC-V, you still need to design an SoC that's just as capable as even the low-end ARM products. It's not just ARM that you're competing against, but companies such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung who are all doing custom designs and all of the existing companies that just license the ARM reference designs.

RISC-V probably makes a lot more sense for small embedded systems and devic

Re:

[Richard_at_work]

And if the Chinese company cant get an ARM license because of US sanctions?

Thats why this project is important to the Chinese - so the US cant hit it with sanctions designed to cripple certain companies.

Re:Why bother?

[Canberra1]

Mod up. Indeed Android is a moving target, and nearly all the drivers are now closed source, with security fixes delayed, and googles devices getting preferential releases. NFC is another item under lock and key. Thanks for the link on sailfish. What is really needed for these privacy stealing apps, is the OS giving then access to a dummy B set, so that false data can be injected back. Something like Copperhead OS (Canada). Very odd that Android is not folding in tested, improved security done >4 years ago. PMP on riscv should be exposing a lot of bad android code.

Re:

[Required Snark]

You should be asking yourself the same question, specifically with respect to reading the damn post. You obviously didn't understand the point.

China has seen how much pain has accrued to Russia because of the embargo. That can't happen with RISC-V. In fact the RISK-V organization moved to Switzerland in order to minimize government political pressure.

Android is the most prevalent computing environment on the planet and it's open source. In the smart phone sector the combo of Android and RISC-V means that

I am confused

[memory_register]

Every few months, I see an article telling me how Chinese students are so much better than everyone else at math, science, pretty much everything.

However, I have yet to see a stable, useful, complete operating system developed in China. Or a chip to run it. They are trying to cobble together Western tech instead.

Why the disconnect?

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

It's easy to get confused if you hang around with weird people who say weird stuff all the time. I, personally, would not recommend it.

Re:

[rantrantrant]

It's easy to get confused if you hang around with weird people who say weird stuff all the time. I, personally, would not recommend it.

=D ROFL!!!

Re:

[h33t l4x0r]

China has interesting Linux distros, but they're focused on AI.
Focusing on OS would be kind of weird considering their goals.

Re:I am confused

[Registered Coward v2]

Every few months, I see an article telling me how Chinese students are so much better than everyone else at math, science, pretty much everything. However, I have yet to see a stable, useful, complete operating system developed in China. Or a chip to run it. They are trying to cobble together Western tech instead. Why the disconnect?

I would suspect it's not a lack of top notch talent, but a system that allocates resources to projects based on government decisions rather than market forces. Couple that with a risk adverse structure, and it is hard to develop innovative solutions as the system simply is not setup for it. If the CCP could really allow its market to develop more freely I suspect they would easily rival other nations in terms of innovation and cutting edge products. However, that also risks them losing their grip on the country, somehing I doubt leadership is willing to do.

Re:

[stikves]

Yes, a very unfortunate situation.

Those sorry CCP heads are stuck between economic stagnation, and actually letting their people go free. Release the leash, get more returns, but people start speaking their minds. Pull the leash, but they cannot keep the unrealistic economic bubble anymore.

So sad.

Re:

[alvinrod]

Probably because the best of the best can get a job anywhere in the world. The Chinese government isn't friendly to a number of people or opinions and a good education is an easy ticket to some other country where you won't be persecuted. The long years of communism (and the ongoing communism light) haven't helped either. The brilliance of any number of workers can be squandered by whatever bozo the party has placed in charge.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Every few months, I see an article telling me how Chinese students are so much better than everyone else at math, science, pretty much everything.

However, I have yet to see a stable, useful, complete operating system developed in China. Or a chip to run it. They are trying to cobble together Western tech instead.

Why the disconnect?

I think Richard Feynman probably said it best in "Surely You're Kidding Mr. Feynman" - in the following excerpt: Richard Feynman on Education in Brazil [v.cx].

In summary, they know the m

Re:

[buravirgil]

In a 12 by 12 multiplication table, how many distinct values are there? A 10 by 10?

I pose the question to you because Feynman's book was an influence. (The answers are not 72 & 50.)
I was once curious as to how many "facts" students were required to memorize and what facility it made for reducing fractions and dealing with proportions.I did not accept the assertion to memorize a smaller table was a meaningful execution of teaching concepts and was likely a lazy and symbolic execution of a good idea.

Re:

[tigersha]

Back in the day The New Math people swooned that they could get 6 year olds to just learn group theory fromscratch end get on with. Notably, that trend did not last long.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

Why the disconnect?

Because Great Firewall of China.

Next question!

Re:

[Hari Pota]

"wujian100_open is a MCU base SoC. We can simulate by EDA tools and emulate by FPGA. Also we can develop the IPs and software in this platform. We wish more and more developers building the open MCU ecosystem with T-Head. IC design and development should be faster simpler and more reliable"

Re:

[tigersha]

How much do you think an FPGA that can run a 8 core 64 bit CPU at desktop class speeds is going to cost?

Re:

[tlhIngan]

How much do you think an FPGA that can run a 8 core 64 bit CPU at desktop class speeds is going to cost?

it can't.

When I was working on SoCs, we were using the very latest Synopsys FPGA platforms - and it contained 4 top end FPGAs (cost: $30,000+ in 1000 piece quantities, yes I can bet you the platform cost probably a quarter million dollars each). Even then, we couldn't put a 2x2 (2 big cores, 2 little cores) on it if you wanted peripherals - it was just to ocomplex. The design had to be sectioned off into

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Chinese students are so much better than everyone else at math, science

That is true at the K-12 level. It is not true for universities, and especially not true for grad schools.

pretty much everything.

Not at all. Only math and science.

I have yet to see a stable, useful, complete operating system developed in China.

Building a successful OS has little to do with individual skills in math and science. It depends much more on having an innovative entrepreneurial culture and free markets.

Go to the Googleplex in Mountain View: There are plenty of Asian-educated people, starting with the CEO.

Disclaimer: My kids attended public school in China for several years. When we returned to