Why RISC-V
Why RISC-V
What's RISC-V
RISC-V is an open ISA (instruction set architecture) enabling a new era of innovation for processor architectures. The RISC-V Foundation consists of more than 325 member companies. Here are the key benefits of the technology.
Software architects
Firmware engineers
Foftware developers
RISC-V is much more than an open ISA, it is also a frozen ISA. The base instructions are frozen and optional extensions which have been approved are also frozen. Because of the stability of the ISA, software development can confidently be applied to RISC-V knowing that your investment will be preserved. Software written for RISC-V will run on all similar RISC-V cores forever. The frozen ISA provides a solid foundation that software managers can depend on to preserve their software investments. Because the RISC-V ISA is open, this translates to hardware engineers having more flexibility over the processor implementation. With this power, software architects can become more influential in the final hardware implementation. They can provide input to hardware designers to make the RISC-V core more software centric.
CTOs / Chip designers
System Architects
Innovation is the key enabler of RISC-V. Because the ISA is open, it is the equivalent of everyone having a micro architecture license. One can optimize designs for lower power, performance, security, etc. while keeping full compatibility with other designs. Because there is significantly more control over the hardware implementation, all technical recipients of the architecture can make suggestions at a much earlier point than previously was possible. The result is a solution with significantly fewer compromises. RISC-V also supports custom instructions for designs which require particular acceleration or specialty functions.
Board designers
In addition to the frozen ISA benefits, RISC-V’s open ISA can provide several additional benefits. For example, if engineers are implementing a soft RISC-V core in an FPGA, often the RTL source code is available. Since RISC-V is royalty free this creates significant flexibility to port a RISC-V based design from an FPGA to an ASIC or another FPGA without any software modifications. Designers who are concerned with security from a trust perspective will also appreciate RISC-V. When the RTL source code is available, this enables deep inspection. With the ability to inspect the RTL, one can establish trust.
RISC-V vs ARM
First of all, RISC-V is open-source while ARM is not. This means that RISC-V is license-free and royalty-free. RISC-V allows the user to extend the ISA with new instructions and innovate the micro-architecture of the RISC-V processors for free but ARM asks the user to pay royalty-fees. This made RISC-V quickly welcomed by many manufacturers.
In terms of complexity, ARM is considered to be more complex than RISC-V. The other reason is that ARM is more over-optimized for mobile-phones than it is for laptops, desktops, and servers. RISC-V is not over-optimized for one particular implementation. It is suitable for all computing systems, from microcontrollers to supercomputers.
RISC-V and ARM are both RISC ISA Architectures. Both of them have their own advantages and it hard to take a side, but the flexibility and open-source nature of RISC-V has made it possible to be adopted faster into the electronics industry, promising a potential future!