Is the main advantage of RISC-V’s that it is a free and open standard, or does it have other inherent advantages over other RISC architectures as well?
The advantages that we’ll see come from the implementation more than the spec, but having an open standard for the ISA allows more companies to make implementations and to innovate.
The true benefits will be ~10 years in, when RISCV chip designers are more experienced and have had time to innovate and build good IP blocks.
E.g. companies that make ARM SoCs are pick’n mix’ing IP from ARM, and adding their own special sauce on top. The future in RISCV comes from having many companies that compete to make intercompatible IP, which hardware vendors like Qualcomm and Rockchip can then licence to make SoCs out of.
There is benefit to RISCV, over ARM but mostly that comes down to:
not having legacy compatibility to maintain.
having a frozen spec that is less likely to slowly get feature creep like x86 & ARM.
having hindsight for things like vector extension implementations & macro-op fusion.
Is the main advantage of RISC-V’s that it is a free and open standard, or does it have other inherent advantages over other RISC architectures as well?
The advantages that we’ll see come from the implementation more than the spec, but having an open standard for the ISA allows more companies to make implementations and to innovate.
The true benefits will be ~10 years in, when RISCV chip designers are more experienced and have had time to innovate and build good IP blocks.
E.g. companies that make ARM SoCs are pick’n mix’ing IP from ARM, and adding their own special sauce on top. The future in RISCV comes from having many companies that compete to make intercompatible IP, which hardware vendors like Qualcomm and Rockchip can then licence to make SoCs out of.
There is benefit to RISCV, over ARM but mostly that comes down to: