Always wondered why RISC-V doesn't get more mainstream adoption.
Even if not at the consumer level, having your data center, for example, running a cheaper (I assume since no license for the instruction set means not having to pay for it and more options to buy from leading to lower prices) and less power demanding option when compared to x86-64 sounds enticing to me.
Maybe no one wants to be the genea pig to iron out the kinks of the transition or maybe the raw performance of x86 is bigger deal than I think it is and its worth the price and power. Dunno.
brucehoult · 18m ago
> 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.
Kampfschnitzel · 2h ago
From what I've seen, most RISC V chips are still far behind x86 and ARM when it comes to raw power. I don't think the loss in performance is justifiable with lower cost (yet)
choffee · 1h ago
I think there has been a big uptake in things you don't see like embedded or FPGA cores but as a general CPU it's nowhere near as efficient as ARM/x86 right now is my understanding. So it might be running in the SSD and the Fan controller but not as the CPU.
I think a large part of the cost of a CPU core is not the instruction set but the optimisation of the CPU and ARM/Intel/AMD are still way ahead in those. And so it needs people to optimise the cores, which when they have done that they charge for being a better CPU.
rwmj · 59m ago
There's a fair bit of adoption where you don't see it (for example, if you have an NVidia GPU or a WD hard drive, you likely have a few embedded RISC-V cores already). We're expecting server hardware with good performance in a year or two.
bobmcnamara · 2h ago
> Always wondered why RISC-V doesn't get more mainstream adoption.
For me, it's because the ecosystem has fragged even harder than Xtensa, who will sell you custom CPUs. THead made yet another vector unit that's required to approach anything near the Intel/AMD moat numbers.
SpecInt/GHz last year was around half of Intel/AMD/ARM numbers.
The imminent demise of CISC has been trumpeted from the rooftops for at least the last 30 years...
deaddodo · 53m ago
ARM isn't CISC and has, by sheer numbers, completely dominated x86 for decades now; not counting the massive number of MIPS, AVR, etc embedded chips.
Additionally, if you want to get super technical (as if there were ever a real delineation between RISC/CISC), both AMD and Intel decode x86 into internal micro-ops which are essentially RISC.
So, for all intents and purposes, CISC is dead and buried.
guerrilla · 4h ago
This is good. Maybe it means some day we'll able to run Steam on it. Wouldn't that be funny? Windows emulation on x86-64 emulation on RISC-V.
snvzz · 3h ago
I am hopeful valve will release a risc-v build themselves.
And wine/proton will integrate with this or some similar solution for running x86 binaries.
guerrilla · 3h ago
They can't. The games themselves are compiled for x86-64 and closed source. It's not enough if they just recompiled Steam, Proton, etc.
rwmj · 42m ago
It seems as if there are unofficial(?) Steam ports to Arm which presumably run the x86-64 binaries in emulation, so that would be a similar sort of thing.
sylware · 39m ago
Funny, I am doing exactly the other way around: I run small RV64 linux programs on x86_64 linux.
I cannot way for the first AAA games to run on ultra-performant RISC-V(RV23+) microarchitectures made with the state-of-the-art silicon process.
badmonster · 10h ago
What remaining challenges are you most interested in solving for felix86—GPU driver support, full 32-bit compatibility, better Wine integration, or something else entirely?
westurner · 9h ago
The felix86 compatibility list also lists SuperTux and SuperTuxCart.
https://box86.org/
Even if not at the consumer level, having your data center, for example, running a cheaper (I assume since no license for the instruction set means not having to pay for it and more options to buy from leading to lower prices) and less power demanding option when compared to x86-64 sounds enticing to me.
Maybe no one wants to be the genea pig to iron out the kinks of the transition or maybe the raw performance of x86 is bigger deal than I think it is and its worth the price and power. Dunno.
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.
For me, it's because the ecosystem has fragged even harder than Xtensa, who will sell you custom CPUs. THead made yet another vector unit that's required to approach anything near the Intel/AMD moat numbers.
SpecInt/GHz last year was around half of Intel/AMD/ARM numbers.
The imminent demise of CISC has been trumpeted from the rooftops for at least the last 30 years...
Additionally, if you want to get super technical (as if there were ever a real delineation between RISC/CISC), both AMD and Intel decode x86 into internal micro-ops which are essentially RISC.
So, for all intents and purposes, CISC is dead and buried.
And wine/proton will integrate with this or some similar solution for running x86 binaries.
I cannot way for the first AAA games to run on ultra-performant RISC-V(RV23+) microarchitectures made with the state-of-the-art silicon process.
"lsteamclient: Add support for ARM64." https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/commit/8ff40aad6ef00... .. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43847860
/? box86: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
"New box86 v0.3.2 and Box64 v0.2.4 released – RISC-V and WoW64 support" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37197074
/? box64 is:pr RISC-V is:closed: https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64/pulls?q=is%3Apr+risc-v+is%3...