Post #2170423

I'm not gonna say "don't do it", but I've dug into this deeply and I've turned away from RISC V. RISC V is slowly being pidgeon-holed into embedded systems. This is not a bad thing, the embedded market (cars, tvs, industrial controls) is huge and diverse. RISC V has had a very rough start to introduction into bridge-and-bus systems the way we know from Intel/amd because there have simply been too many iterations of CPU registers and capability flags for integrators to take the platform seriously enough to commit to piling a bunch of effort to design, produce, and lead sales on any RISC V platform. Even arm (especially v9) has settled some of these platform issues and is ahead of RISC V in adoption in the integrated platform space (as opposed to embedded). Long story long, it is extremely difficult to write device drivers for RISC V because one would have to write half a dozen architecture versions, just for a niche platform that barely sells. Conversely, an embedded controller for, say, a vehicle gets a preliminary build and few revisions, ongoing support isn't part of planning the same way.