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Why RISC-V Is Succeeding

Interest in this particular ISA is expanding, but the growth of other open-source hardware is less certain.

Semiconductor Engineering

 

There is no disputing the excitement surround the introduction of the RISC-V processor architecture. Yet while many have called it a harbinger of a much broader open-source hardware movement, the reasons behind its success are not obvious, and the implications for an expansion of more open-source cores is far from certain…

The perception around processors has changed. “RISC-V has been fueled by the requirements for freedom in the hardware design process community,” says Simon Davidmann, founder and CEO for Imperas Software. “Electronic products are defined by their functionality, a lot of which is defined by software, which is running on processors. Everything needs some form of machine learning today. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about your phone, taking better pictures, whatever it is, there are huge amounts of computing needed. And what people realized is that they needed lots of processors. They needed their own fabrics of processors. You need to configure them the way you want. Off-the-shelf technologies don’t help you. So there’s a change in the electronic product marketplace saying, ‘We need freedom to architect chips, and freedom to architect the processors and the fabrics of processors that live in these chips.'”…

 

To read the full Semiconductor Engineering article by Brian Bailey, click here.


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