> Always wondered why RISC-V doesn't get more mainstream adoption.
It's very simple!
Because the amount of time it takes to design and produce a data centre level CPU microarchitecture is greater than the time RISC-V extensions needed for data centre CPUs have existed.
The original RISC-V specification was ratified less than six years ago, but you really couldn't create a data centre CPU until at least RVA22, ratified two years ago in March 2023 -- or preferably RVA23 which was ratified in October 2024 and has the features needed for efficient hypervisors.
You can knock out a microcontroller CPU core in a weekend, but something to compete with current Apple, AMD, Amazon etc CPUs takes a long time to make. Most companies doing that started work only in 2021 or 2022.
It is simply too soon. A lot of stuff is in the pipeline.
It's very simple!
Because the amount of time it takes to design and produce a data centre level CPU microarchitecture is greater than the time RISC-V extensions needed for data centre CPUs have existed.
The original RISC-V specification was ratified less than six years ago, but you really couldn't create a data centre CPU until at least RVA22, ratified two years ago in March 2023 -- or preferably RVA23 which was ratified in October 2024 and has the features needed for efficient hypervisors.
You can knock out a microcontroller CPU core in a weekend, but something to compete with current Apple, AMD, Amazon etc CPUs takes a long time to make. Most companies doing that started work only in 2021 or 2022.
It is simply too soon. A lot of stuff is in the pipeline.