Comment by K0balt

First, im a big fan of what riscV has brought into the world; 0.50 cent processors with radios that can reach a kilometer, 8 cent MCUs that you can put anywhere because they are basically free, 8 dollar Linux computers, and 1 dollar WiFi nodes that can run reasonable applications. And also, the first application capable chip you can actually trust to be free of unpublished capabilities.

RiscV is going to win despite its limitations, simply because they can be worked around freely, and the cost per core is zero. Every major company will be making their own flavor, because it’s the only way they can economically own the product of their work. Not many companies can be Qualcomm or Apple, but when a company invests millions in an architecture, they want it to be an asset on -their- balance sheet. It may not be the best starting point, but it’s the only journey that ends in ownership without starting from scratch.

X86 had dominance for decades not because it’s the best architecture, but because it was the best choice. RiscV doesn’t have to be the best architecture to be the best choice for companies to build on.