What Is RISC-V Anyway?

RISC-V aims to answer an age old question in computer science.

Do we make things easier for the human or the computer?

X86 processors such as the likes of Intel and AMD rely on and instruction set called CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computers), a rich instruction set that, especially in the days of Assembly, made interacting with the CPU far easier. ARM, on the other hand, relies on the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers) set. The reduced number of instructions makes the developer's job more complicated, but means the architecture of the chip can be simpler. Simple means fewer transistors means less power consumption.

There are pros and cons to both architectures that go beyond the scope of my writings headers, however both have one thing in common: they're licensed.

How we arrived at X86 is actually a fascinating story of rivalry and eventual collaboration between Intel and AMD, but needless to say, no one but them may use these chips, and they like it that way. ARM, on the other hand, licenses their architecture out to manufacturers, hence the ubiquity of ARM processors in microcontrollers and smart phones (on top of the obvious benefits). That's right, Apple pays ARM for the license to their chips.

The History of RISC-V is better explained by the foundation itself, but needless to say that due to the efforts of academics at UC Berkley, in 2010 RISC-V was brought into the world and a new, open standard was born.

RISC-V international does not make a available any designs per se, but they publish and maintain a set of standards that allow computer scientists to develop their own hardware in compliance with the instruction set.

And It's Gaining Momentum

For the first time since I heard of RISC-V back in 2014, development boards are starting to become easily available to the public, and along with C, Rust is throwing its hat in the ring with numerous targets for RISC-V cores.

This space is incredibly exciting, as competition in the market is almost never a bad thing for consumers and sensitive or pure open source projects finally have a viable alternative to the industry giants that have currently run the show in the background for decades!