Top all-time · #2510
Erik Engheim
Personal blog · erik-engheim.medium.comhardwareprogramming
Erik Engheim's personal blog at erik-engheim.medium.com covers hardware and programming. Since 2020, 30 different Hacker News readers have linked it 58 times, most often “The Genius of RISC-V Microprocessors”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters cite Erik Engheim's Medium articles as sources on SpaceX and Elon Musk, airship lifting capacity, RISC vs CISC and CPU design, and Apple's M1 chips.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Genius of RISC-V Microprocessors3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-12-20
- Why is Apple's M1 chip so fast?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-11-30
- Python is noun-focused, Julia is verb-focused2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-12-20
- Apple M1 foreshadows Rise of RISC-V2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-12-19
- Demystifying RISC Microprocessor Philosophy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-05
- Ditch Excel and Use Julia Data Frames2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-27
- /is-elon-musk-just-a-sales-guy-9d3eb7a1b49c2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-04
- ARM, x86 and RISC-V Microprocessors Compared2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-20
- ARM vs. RISC-V Vector Extensions2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-04-10
- /calculating-lifting-capacity-of-airships-48df5cd7d1472 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-28
What Hacker News says?
Fusion power could give you power when you need it unlike solar power which would need storage. Of course Fusion power is so complex and expensive that it is likely far cheaper to simply build solar panels and add storage. While Fusion obviously has merits I think it is overhyped as a solution. Molten Salt Reactors are a much more sensible solution if nuclear power is the desired solution. Why? Because they actually…
Comment linking /yes-clean-nuclear-power-exists-ae4104cc10b
on “Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy”Submitted Why is Apple's M1 chip so fast? as a story · 768 points
HN discussionI would argue that `end` is a much better choice than both the Python approach and curly braces: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/the-case-against-curly-brace... `end` marks of blocks of code much more clearly than curly braces. It is also requires fewer keyboard taps. To type {} requires holding down four keys in total (shift-[ twice). end is just three key strokes. But more importantly is saves curly braces for oth…
Comment linking /the-case-against-curly-braces-languages-dd0a55840fcb
on “Swift for TensorFlow Shuts Down”Submitted Apple M1 foreshadows Rise of RISC-V as a story · 401 points
HN discussionM1 is still just a tablet SoC in a laptop form factor. That wouldn't be good enough for production hardware. The developer units had a previous iPad’s A12 SoC in an enclosure for developers to test things on. For example, the A series doesn't support virtualization because that's not required on a phone or tablet. But the M1 supports this and other laptop/desktop features. Even the A14 only has 4 cores compared to t…
Comment linking /why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2
on “M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness”Submitted What do RISC and CISC mean in 2020? as a story · 201 points
HN discussionI would say Go is a systems programming language. A systems programming language is for creating services used by actual end user applications. That is pretty much what Go is being used for. Who is writing editors or drawing applications in Go? Nobody. Go does contain many of the things of interest to systems programmers such as pointers and the ability to specify memory layout of data structures. You can make your…
Comment linking /is-go-a-systems-programming-language-c243c80eb6f9
on “Generics can make your Go code slower”Submitted Addressing Criticism of RISC-V Microprocessors as a story · 176 points
HN discussionCould you elaborate on why you think RISC-V is a mediocre instruction-set architecture? I would rather say it is genius: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/the-genius-of-risc-v-micropr... RISC-V has learned a lot from the mistakes of previous ISAs and made sure the instruction-set fits both low power consumption solution as well as high performance solutions. All sorts of benchmark tests show that RISC-V from a theoret…
Comment linking /the-genius-of-risc-v-microprocessors-b19d735abaa6
on “Apple M1 foreshadows Rise of RISC-V”Submitted The Genius of RISC-V Microprocessors as a story · 160 points
HN discussionI don't think you quite appreciate how clever RISC-V has been designed. RISC-V is very well designed to be used with both complex and simple micro-architectures. By combining instruction compression and macro and micro-fusion you get everything you claim only x86 and ARM can do an more. Here is a proper explanation of how: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/the-genius-of-risc-v-micropr...
Comment linking /the-genius-of-risc-v-microprocessors-b19d735abaa6
on “Apple M1 foreshadows Rise of RISC-V”Submitted Go does not need a Java-style GC as a story · 153 points
HN discussionI'm surprised that there are people who are still ignorant enough to parrot these talking points. https://erik-engheim.medium.com/historical-iq-tests-on-immig... The average IQ of Koreans is now the highest in the world, after making consistent gains of 8 points per decade for people born between the 1940s and the 1980s. Your ignorance, like IQ, is fixable.
Comment linking /historical-iq-tests-on-immigrants-6befd8706d73
on “Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher to put out fire in seconds”Submitted Microprocessors Running on Air? as a story · 134 points
HN discussionWell, two main reasons: 1. Innovator's dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma ARM in this case is the underdog, attacking the incumbent x86. It is the lesser tech because it started from "below" (lower value niches not taken by the incumbent which prefers higher profit margins). 2. RISC vs CISC has never been settled. Until Apple (and Amazon super recently) produced their super recent archi…
Comment linking /why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2
on “A preview of x64 emulation on Windows for ARM”Submitted Stop the “Hard Work” Obsession as a story · 101 points
HN discussionIt was the Jobs Ive combo that worked. I think Ive was making too many form over function decisions towards the end which benefitted neither Apple nor its customers. Cook is a bean counter. That does not neat to be all bad as much as I hate to say it. That is why I liken get he new Apple to Microsoft with all of he pros and cons that entails: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/apple-is-turning-into-the-ne...
Comment linking /apple-is-turning-into-the-next-microsoft-b080102051ed
on “Why Jony Ive left Apple to the ‘accountants’”Submitted ARM vs. RISC-V Vector Extensions as a story · 93 points
HN discussion> ... is there something else going on in this case? There is: the term comes from general CPU design terminology and is not specific to RISC-V, although Google does find some RISC-V-specific materials for me given your query[1–3]. Look for micro- and macro-op fusion in Agner Fog’s manuals[4] or Wikichip[5], for example. [1]: https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Tue1130celio-fu... [2]: https://reviews.llvm.o…
Comment linking /the-genius-of-risc-v-microprocessors-b19d735abaa6
on ““Risc V greatly underperforms””Submitted Is Zig the Long Awaited C Replacement as a story · 71 points
HN discussionRISC ISAs are about an assembly language that is for compilers to write, not humans. That's not to say you can't, but the dance in and out of the registers is tedious. And RISC-V is more explicitly pure-RISC than ARM, and honestly I think ARM is "friendlier" to write with its conditional instructions and other conveniences. Also for some reason I find the ARM mnemonics easier to read. Maybe it's the 6502 influence,…
Comment linking /arm-x86-and-risc-v-microprocessors-compared-92bf0d46fd52
on “Show HN: Minimax – A Compressed-First, Microcoded RISC-V CPU”Submitted Ditch Excel and Use Julia Data Frames as a story · 54 points
HN discussionThe approach of making a small instruction-set with optional extensions means RISC-V is very well suited for making specialized co-processors. This story discuss that more in detail: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/apple-m1-foreshadows-risc-v-... On example of this is Esperanto Technologies, which has created an SoC with slightly more transistors than the M1, which has over 1000 RISC-V cores which implement the RISC…
Comment linking /apple-m1-foreshadows-risc-v-dd63a62b2562
on “The Genius of RISC-V Microprocessors”Submitted Barren American Suburbs as a story · 31 points
HN discussionAll that is explained in the linked article if you read it: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/making-a-non-electric-rover-... Fluidics can run amplifiers for acoustic signals, which you can use for transmission. Seeing can be done like bats. Article gets into the details.
Comment linking /making-a-non-electric-rover-for-the-venus-planetary-surface-25e01e5ddbab
on “Microprocessors Running on Air?”Submitted Are Servers Next for Apple? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThere are lots of little things that add up. Things like expressing multiline closures in Python is clunky compared to almost any other dynamic language whether Ruby, Lua or Julia. AsyncIO is quite complex in how it works. You use the same patterns for concurrency in Julia, but it is so much easier to grasp and work with. Multiple-dispatch as used in Julia e.g. makes API design so much cleaner. You can see that almo…
Comment linking /python-vs-julia-observations-e61ee667fa95
on “Julia: A Post-Mortem”Submitted The Genius of RISC-V Microprocessors (2020) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionElon Musk is the chief engineer of SpaceX. If you don't believe this, I'm not sure what to tell you. It's extremely well documented. https://erik-engheim.medium.com/is-elon-musk-just-a-sales-gu... You can watch the playlist linked above to verify this for yourself. Tim Dodd asks Elon deeply technical questions about Starship and Elon explains the design rationale and tradeoffs behind each of them. In one of the vide…
Comment linking /is-elon-musk-just-a-sales-guy-9d3eb7a1b49c
on “With Wall Street’s help, you’re about to be forced to buy stock in SpaceX”Submitted ARM vs. RISC-V Vector Extensions as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
