Ask HN: What's the value proposition of RISC-V?

96 points

10 years ago

I've been seeing more interest in RISC-V lately, I suppose due to the recent RISC-V workshop at the end of November:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%201-m&q=risc-v

I can see how the architecture is of benefit for academic research, given how conservative all the other ones are with regard to protecting their IP. Some of the NDA related hoops I've had to jump through as an embedded developer have had a direct revenue impact on past projects, so I'm pretty motivated to avoid that nonsense by supporting a neutral, open, consortium-backed architecture instead.

However, if I put my business hat on and am preparing to bid on a project, I find myself without a strong argument for favoring RISC-V instead of ARM or MIPS. I can make an argument for the usual open source benefits of design longevity and avoiding vendor lock-in, but it's a really hard sell when it boils down to SiFive versus essentially the entire rest of the semiconductor industry.

Is there something I'm missing about RISC-V? Some commercial advantage I'm not aware of?

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67 comments