It's an early-access prototype for engineers to use to develop software for the cheap products that will come in the next year or two. It's not intended for hobbyists.
I'm not referring to this specific hardware - I know this is not consumer-ready - but to RISC-V overall. If we want to sell a RISC-V-based x86/ARM replacement, it can't cost more than the well-known, multi-sourced part for the same application.
As an engineer, I care about the elegance of the underlying hardware/ISA, but when it's time to buy tech for a client, I can't afford to do that.
It came, went, and came again for ARM. On complete mainstream systems, however, the price of the CPU will be a relatively small fraction of the total BOM.
It's an early-access prototype for engineers to use to develop software for the cheap products that will come in the next year or two. It's not intended for hobbyists.
I'm not referring to this specific hardware - I know this is not consumer-ready - but to RISC-V overall. If we want to sell a RISC-V-based x86/ARM replacement, it can't cost more than the well-known, multi-sourced part for the same application.
As an engineer, I care about the elegance of the underlying hardware/ISA, but when it's time to buy tech for a client, I can't afford to do that.
> It needs to have a better performance per dollar
I am not sure whether this will ever come.
It came, went, and came again for ARM. On complete mainstream systems, however, the price of the CPU will be a relatively small fraction of the total BOM.