[HN Gopher] RISC-V takes first step toward international ISO/IEC...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       RISC-V takes first step toward international ISO/IEC
       standardization
        
       Author : jrepinc
       Score  : 248 points
       Date   : 2025-10-30 13:30 UTC (6 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (riscv.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (riscv.org)
        
       | axblount wrote:
       | What's the advantage of standardizing through ISO/IEC? Better
       | adoption in industry?
       | 
       | Seems like this would take away a lot of power from RISC-V
       | International. But I don't know much about this process.
        
         | boredatoms wrote:
         | Maybe it helps get government contracts
         | 
         | "We're standards compliant"
        
           | userbinator wrote:
           | It's not like ARM and x86 are standardised by ISO either.
        
             | signa11 wrote:
             | they are de-facto...
        
             | eru wrote:
             | Yes, but if 30 years ago ARM had an ISO standard they could
             | point to, that would have probably helped with government
             | adoption?
             | 
             | (It's still a trade-off, because standards also cost
             | community time and effort.)
        
               | userbinator wrote:
               | Relatedly, 30 years ago someone attempted to turn the
               | Windows 3.1 API into an ISO standard:
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_Programming_Int
               | erf...
               | 
               | It didn't become one, but it did become standardised as
               | ECMA-234:
               | 
               | https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-
               | standards/st...
        
               | eru wrote:
               | Well, Wine shows that Win32 is the only stable ABI, even
               | on Linux.
        
               | GoblinSlayer wrote:
               | >On May 5, 1993, Sun Microsystems announced Windows
               | Application Binary Interface (WABI), a product to run
               | Windows software on Unix, and the Public Windows
               | Interface (PWI) initiative, an effort to standardize a
               | subset of the popular 16-bit Windows APIs.
               | 
               | >In February 1994, the PWI Specification Committee sent a
               | draft specification to X/Open--who rejected it in March,
               | after being threatened by Microsoft's assertion of
               | intellectual property rights (IPR) over the Windows APIs
               | 
               | Looks like that's what it was.
        
             | miki123211 wrote:
             | Governments seem to care about "self-sufficiency" a lot
             | more these days, especially after what's happening in both
             | China and the US right now.
             | 
             | If the choice is between an architecture owned, patented
             | and managed by a single company domiciled in a foreign
             | country, versus one which is an international standard and
             | has multiple competing vendors, the latter suddenly seems a
             | lot more attractive.
             | 
             | Price and performance don't matter _that_ much. Governments
             | are a lot less price-sensitive than consumers (and even
             | businesses), they 're willing to spend money to achieve
             | their goals.
        
             | aDyslecticCrow wrote:
             | Yes, and they're both massively debated and criticised, to
             | the point that the industry developed Risk-V in the
             | firstplace. Not to mention the rugpull licensing ARM pulled
             | a few years back.
        
             | lambdaone wrote:
             | This is exactly what makes this such an interesting
             | development. Standardization is part of the process of the
             | CPU industry becoming a mature industry not dependent on
             | the whims of individual companies. Boring, yes, but also
             | stable.
        
         | kouteiheika wrote:
         | It ticks a checkbox. That's it. Some organizations and/or
         | governments might have rules that emphasize using international
         | standards, and this might help with it.
         | 
         | I just hope it's going to be a "throw it over the fence and
         | standardize" type of a deal, where the actual standardization
         | process will still be _outside_ of ISO (the ISO process is not
         | very good - not my words, just ask the members of the C++
         | committee) and the text of the standard will be freely licensed
         | and available to everyone (ISO paywalls its standards).
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | > the ISO process is not very good - not my words, just ask
           | the members of the C++ committee
           | 
           | Casual reminder that they ousted one of the founders of MPEG
           | for daring to question the patent mess around H.265
           | (paraphrasing, a _lot_ , of course)
        
         | jcelerier wrote:
         | As the article says:
         | 
         | > "International standards have a special status," says Phil
         | Wennblom, Chair of ISO/IEC JTC 1. "Even though RISC-V is
         | already globally recognized, once something becomes an ISO/IEC
         | standard, it's even more widely accepted. Countries around the
         | world place strong emphasis on international standards as the
         | basis for their national standards. It's a significant tailwind
         | when it comes to market access."
        
           | veltas wrote:
           | Says that, but I don't agree with that. If anything it would
           | have been less successful being picked up in discount markets
           | if the specs weren't free for download, and I don't know what
           | fringes they're trying to break into but probably none of
           | them care whether the spec is ISO.
        
             | rjsw wrote:
             | That can depend on how the spec gets made into an ISO
             | standard. There is a process called "harvesting" that can
             | allow the original author to continue to distribute an
             | existing specification independently of ISO.
        
             | jcelerier wrote:
             | > Says that, but I don't agree with that
             | 
             | I guess you just never had to fill in a grant application
             | where you have to justify that you are using official
             | standards so that you can get money
        
           | lifthrasiir wrote:
           | Usual lies. There are a plethora of largely ignored
           | international standards. Making it an international standard
           | is just one of many ways to achieve the wide worldwide
           | acception and still has a high failure rate.
        
         | ryukoposting wrote:
         | Government agencies like to take standards off the shelf
         | whenever they can. Citing something overseen by an apolitical,
         | non-profit organization avoids conflicts of interest (relative
         | to the alternatives).
         | 
         | Random example I found at a glance: NIST recommending use of a
         | specific ISO standard in domains not formally covered by a
         | regulatory body:
         | https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.S...
        
           | o11c wrote:
           | It's impossible to take ISO seriously after the .docx fiasco.
        
             | hofrogs wrote:
             | What .docx fiasco?
        
               | lifthrasiir wrote:
               | Office Open XML, the standard behind .docx and other
               | zipped XML formats, was fast-tracked into the
               | international standard without many rounds of reviews (by
               | the _same_ JTC 1!).
        
             | noir_lord wrote:
             | That's the definition of throwing the baby out with the
             | bath water.
             | 
             | Is ISO as an organisation imperfect sometimes (as in the
             | docs case) sure?, it's composed of humans who are generally
             | flawed creatures, is it generally a good solution despite
             | that?, also sure.
             | 
             | They've published tens of thousands off standards over 70
             | plus years that are deeply important to multiple industries
             | so disregarding them because Microsoft co-opted them once
             | 20 odd years ago seems unreasonable to me.
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | > Citing something overseen by an apolitical, non-profit
           | organization avoids conflicts of interest (relative to the
           | alternatives).
           | 
           | Of course this is a lie. But yes, governments like to claim
           | that.
        
         | 6SixTy wrote:
         | My take is that it could help tie up fragmentation. RISC-V has
         | different profiles defining what instructions come with for
         | different use cases like a general purpose OS, and enshrining
         | them as an ISO standard would give the entire industry a
         | rallying point.
         | 
         | Without these profiles, we are stuck with memorizing a word
         | soup of RV64GCBV_Zicntr_Zihpm_etc all means
        
           | justahuman74 wrote:
           | riscv was already gaining a profile mechanism outside of ISO,
           | for example 'RVA23' is a known set of extensions
        
           | snvzz wrote:
           | RISC-V never had a fragmentation problem, thanks to the
           | profiles.
        
             | IshKebab wrote:
             | I wouldn't say it _never had_ a problem, but the profiles
             | are definitely a reasonable solution.
             | 
             | However even with profiles there are optional extensions
             | and a _lot_ of undefined behaviour (sometimes deliberately,
             | sometimes because the spec is just not especially well
             | written).
        
               | snvzz wrote:
               | The FUD keeps being brought up, but the solution here was
               | in place before the potential issue could manifest.
               | 
               | It started with G, later retroactively named RVA20 (with
               | a minor extra extension that nobody ever skipped
               | implementing), then RVA22 and now RVA23. All application
               | processor implementations out there conform to a profile,
               | and so do the relevant Linux distributions.
               | 
               | Of course, in embedded systems where the vendor controls
               | the full stack, the freedom of micromanaging which
               | extensions to implement as well as the freedom to add
               | custom extensions is actual value.
               | 
               | The original architects of the ISA knew what they were
               | doing.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | Hardly, see programming languages standards and compiler
           | specific extensions.
        
             | aDyslecticCrow wrote:
             | languages are more fluid than processor architectures. I
             | don't think they can be compared.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | One would think, yet welcome to enterprise consulting,
               | especially customers whose main business is not selling
               | software.
               | 
               | You will find fossilized languages all over the place.
        
               | aDyslecticCrow wrote:
               | fossilised is often desirable or requested in some
               | industries. Developing for the embedded market myself, we
               | often have to stick to C99 to ensure compatibility with
               | whatever ancient compiler a costumer or even chipset
               | vendor may still be running.
        
         | thebeardisred wrote:
         | This allows RISC-V international to propose their standards
         | _as_ ISO /IEC standards.
        
       | jgord wrote:
       | busywork ... but maybe good marketing - people somehow believe
       | that ISO has some relationship to quality.
        
         | blurbleblurble wrote:
         | Good marketing, this could open up more large investment into
         | RISC-V.
        
           | Joel_Mckay wrote:
           | Be honest, what does RISC-V offer that 10 year old AArch64
           | doesn't already provide?
           | 
           | RISC-V is still too green, and fragmented-standards always
           | look like a clown car of liabilities to Business people. =3
        
             | kryptiskt wrote:
             | Less legal risk, ARM has grown litigious and wants a bigger
             | piece of the pie.
        
               | Joel_Mckay wrote:
               | IP costs real money, and consumers usually don't care how
               | people split up their pies.
               | 
               | 100% of a small pie is worth far less than a slice from a
               | large pie. I've met people that made that logical error,
               | and it usually doesn't end well. =3
        
             | blurbleblurble wrote:
             | What does <open source anything> offer that trusty old
             | <proprietary burden> doesn't already provide?
        
               | Joel_Mckay wrote:
               | I would agree for FPGA soft-cpu the RISC-V is an obvious
               | choice.
               | 
               | But in general, the next question will be which version
               | did you deploy, and which cross-compiler do you use. All
               | the documentation people search will have caveats, or
               | simply form contradictory guidance.
               | 
               | The problem isn't the ISA, but the ill fated trap of
               | trying to hit every use-case (design variant
               | fragmentation.) ARM 6 made the same mistake, and ARM8/9
               | greatly consolidated around the 64 bit core design.
               | 
               | Indeed, an ISO standard may help narrow the project
               | scope, but I doubt it can save the designs given the
               | behavior some of its proponents have shown. =3
        
               | Pet_Ant wrote:
               | People complain about fragmentation, but I feel like they
               | are missing the forest for the trees.
               | 
               | In the past if you didn't find something you needed,
               | you'd design your own. Now you just tweak RISC-V.
               | 
               | I mean "12 variants of RISC-V" is actually _less_
               | fragmentation than  "RISC-V and 11 others".
               | 
               | As long as there is a stable core to target, that is all
               | that matters for main stream adoption, and profiles and
               | distros are already there with RVA23.
        
               | Joel_Mckay wrote:
               | Sure, but what we saw was most software simply disabled
               | the advanced vendor specific features in ARM, and still
               | only compile for stable code around the core IP.
               | 
               | This is an important phenomena committee consensus
               | couldn't reconcile. =3
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
        
             | mrbluecoat wrote:
             | While the sentiment is a bit harsh, the performance gap
             | noted is real. RISC-V has a ways to go to catch up to ARM64
             | and then finally AMD64 but if the Apple M1 taught us
             | anything, it's possible.
        
               | Joel_Mckay wrote:
               | RISC-V shouldn't try to catch 40 years of spiral-
               | development, but rather focus on something people can
               | gather momentum around.
               | 
               | amd64 wasn't a great design, but provided a painless
               | migration path for x86 developers to 64bit. Even Intel
               | adopted this competitors architecture.
               | 
               | I like the company making a multi-core pseudo GPU card
               | around RISC-V + DSP cores, but again copying NVIDIA
               | bodged on mailbox style hardware is a mistake. It is like
               | the world standardized around square-wheels as a latency
               | joke or something... lol
               | 
               | Making low-volume bespoke silicon is a fools errand, and
               | competing with a half-baked product for an established
               | market is a failed company sooner or later.
               | 
               | I think people are confusing what I see with what I would
               | like to see. An open ISA would be great, but at this
               | point I can't even convince myself I'd buy a spool of
               | such chips. =3
        
         | kazinator wrote:
         | People with absolutely no technical clue who only know "ISO
         | 9001" equate "ISO" with quality initiatives and certifications.
         | 
         | What people with a better clue sometimes wrongly equate ISO
         | with is _interoperability_.
         | 
         | ISO standards can help somewhat. If you have ISO RISC V, then
         | you can analyze a piece of code and know, is this strictly ISO
         | RISV code, or is it using vendor extensions.
         | 
         | If an architecture is controlled by a vendor, or a consortium,
         | we still know analogous things: like does the program conform
         | to some version of the ISA document from the vendor/consortium.
         | 
         | That vendor has a lot of power to take it in new directions
         | though without getting anyone else to sign off.
        
           | Joel_Mckay wrote:
           | A standard 64bit+DSP RISC-V would go a long way for undoing
           | the fragmentation damage caused by the "design by committee"
           | implications.
           | 
           | ..it was the same mistake that made ARM6 worse/more-complex
           | than modern ARM7/8/9. =3
        
             | kazinator wrote:
             | As if we have never seen design-by-committee damage coming
             | from ISO?
             | 
             | Have you heard of this C++ thing? :)
        
               | Joel_Mckay wrote:
               | > Have you heard of this C++ thing?
               | 
               | The STL was good, but Boost proved a phenomena...
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
               | 
               | ISO standards are often just a sign Process-people are in
               | control =3
        
           | IshKebab wrote:
           | > is this strictly ISO RISV code, or is it using vendor
           | extensions
           | 
           | I doubt it - the ISO standard will still allow custom
           | extensions.
        
       | darksaints wrote:
       | Are there any promising core designs yet? Multi-core designs? Any
       | promising extensions being standardized?
       | 
       | I really want to believe, but I don't think we'll see anything
       | like an M5 chip anytime soon simply because there's so little
       | investment from the bigger players.
        
         | snvzz wrote:
         | Tenstorrent has announced Ascalon development boards TBA
         | 2026Q2.
         | 
         | That's not gonna beat the M5, but it should be similar or
         | better relative to M1, and a huge performance jump for RISC-V.
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | Yeah Rivos apparently taped out a high performance server class
         | core (probably only a test chip I'd guess) before Meta bought
         | them.
         | 
         | There are plenty of multi core designs (that's easy) but they
         | aren't very fast.
         | 
         | In terms of open source XiangShan is the most advanced as far
         | as I know. It's fairly high performance out-of-order.
         | 
         | I don't think there's anything M5-level and probably won't be
         | for a while (it took ARM decades so it's not a failing). I
         | doubt we'll see any serious RISC-V laptops because there
         | probably isn't demand (maybe Chromebooks though?). More likely
         | to see phones and servers because Android is supporting RISC-V,
         | and servers run Linux.
         | 
         | In terms of extensions I think it's pretty much all there.
         | Probably it needs some kind of extension to make x86 emulation
         | fast, like Apple did. The biggest extension I know of that
         | isn't ratified is the P packed SIMD one but I don't know if
         | there's much demand for that outside of DSPs.
        
       | claudex wrote:
       | I don't understand why they want to put the RISC-V spec behind
       | the ISO paywall. It will just complicate the access to the
       | standardized version to confirm compliance with it.
        
       | veltas wrote:
       | RISC-V has always been an ivory tower, with a lot of bad
       | decisions they double down on. Not surprised they're rushing
       | towards this outdated stamp of authority too.
        
         | snvzz wrote:
         | >bad decisions they double down on.
         | 
         | Could you elaborate?
        
           | veltas wrote:
           | No overflow/carry flag impacting safe overflow checking and
           | bignum performance, the whole conditional move history and
           | backpeddling and state of Zicond, the system for describing
           | feature support is needlessly complicated and just a mess for
           | users outside of embedded, the spec is written more like an
           | academic paper than a CPU manual, vector instructions act
           | like they're written for a coprocessor for some reason, bad
           | frame pointer ABI support, etc.
        
       | charcircuit wrote:
       | Why ISO? Why not somewhere that will allow people to read the
       | standard for free?
        
       | pjmlp wrote:
       | Not sure if this is a good idea given how ISO has been going for
       | programming languages.
        
         | maxloh wrote:
         | Yeah. I think the ISO process would likely slow down the
         | development of the ISA.
        
           | muvlon wrote:
           | Not only that, it might turn RISC-V from a specification
           | freely available under a FOSS license into a proprietary
           | standard that you have to pay 285 CHF (~$350) to buy a non-
           | transferable license for.
        
             | aleatorianator wrote:
             | ah, yes. OPEN like science or AI
        
       | intsunny wrote:
       | They're excited about putting the spec behind a notoriously
       | closed paywall??
       | 
       | Us older nerds will remember how Microsoft corrupted the entire
       | ISO standardization process to ram down the Office Open XML
       | (.docx/.xlsx/etc) unto the world.
       | 
       | The original Office ISO standard was 6000+ pages and basically
       | declared unreproducible outside of Microsoft themselves.
       | 
       | There is an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to the kafkaesque
       | byzantine nightmare that was that standardization. [0]
       | 
       | ISO def lacks luster, and maybe even relevance.
       | 
       | [O]
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open...
        
       | fork-bomber wrote:
       | A large motivation for this move is likely to ensure that
       | attempts by some incumbent ISAs to lobby the US government to
       | curb the uptake of RISC-V are stymied.
       | 
       | There appears to be an undercurrent of this sort underway where
       | the soaring popularity of RISC-V in markets such as China is
       | politically ripe for some incumbent ISAs to turn US government
       | opinion against RISC-V, from a general uptake PoV or from the PoV
       | of introducing laborious procedural delays in the uptake.
       | 
       | Turning the ISA into an ISO standard helps curb such attempts.
       | 
       | Ethernet, although not directly relevant, is a similar example.
       | You can't lobby the US government to outright ban or generally
       | slow the adoption of Ethernet because it's so much of a universal
       | phenomenon by virtue of it being a standard.
        
         | topspin wrote:
         | Then, there's NASA, and their rad hard HPSC RISC-V. It's a
         | product now, with a Microchip part number (PIC64-HPSC1000-RH)
         | and a second source (SiFive, apparently.) I suppose it's
         | conceivable the a Berkeley CA developed ISA that has been
         | officially adopted as new rad hard avionics CPU platform by the
         | US government's primary aerospace arm could get voted off the
         | island in some timeline, but it's looking fairly improbable at
         | this point.
         | 
         | But yeah, the ISO standard doesn't hurt.
        
           | baaron wrote:
           | For anyone else who thought this was simply a rad chip, it's
           | radiation hardened
           | 
           | https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/pic64-hpsc1000
        
         | rdsubhas wrote:
         | Only time will tell if it ends like: "to avoid someone else
         | shooting us, let's shoot ourselves".
         | 
         | Dedicated consortiums like CNCF, USB Implementers Forum,
         | Alliance for Open Media, IETF, etc are more qualified at moving
         | a standard forward, than ISO or government bodies.
        
         | Someone wrote:
         | > There appears to be an undercurrent of this sort underway
         | where the soaring popularity of RISC-V in markets such as China
         | is politically ripe for some incumbent ISAs to turn US
         | government opinion against RISC-V, from a general uptake PoV or
         | from the PoV of introducing laborious procedural delays in the
         | uptake.
         | 
         | > Turning the ISA into an ISO standard helps curb such
         | attempts.
         | 
         | Why do you think that would help? I fail to see how that would
         | help.
        
           | fork-bomber wrote:
           | An ISO standard is hard to gepolitically regulate, I would
           | think.
           | 
           | It also cements the fact that the technology being
           | standardized is simply too fundamental and likely ubiquitous
           | for folks to worry about it being turned into a strategic
           | weapon.
           | 
           | Taking the previously mentioned ethernet example (not a
           | perfect one I should accentuate again): why bother with
           | blocking it's uptake when it is too fundamentally useful and
           | enabling for a whole bunch of other innovation that builds on
           | top.
        
         | phendrenad2 wrote:
         | > attempts by some incumbent ISAs to lobby the US government to
         | curb the uptake of RISC-V
         | 
         | Is this real? Or FUD?
        
           | phkahler wrote:
           | >> > attempts by some incumbent ISAs to lobby the US
           | government to curb the uptake of RISC-V
           | 
           | >> Is this real? Or FUD?
           | 
           | https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/oct/20/risc-v-
           | dese...
           | 
           | Somebody trying to influence Washington seems to want it shut
           | down.
        
             | fork-bomber wrote:
             | Thanks. That's exactly the kind of subliminal lobbying that
             | I was alluding to. I don't think it's FUD at all.
        
             | throw0101d wrote:
             | > _https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/oct/20/risc-v-
             | dese..._
             | 
             | From the article:
             | 
             | > _The risks aren't theoretical. A new report found that
             | DeepSeek, a Chinese AI firm, has been responsible for
             | producing malicious code in roughly half the sensitive
             | cybersecurity incidents analyzed on GitHub. If China is
             | willing to leverage open software in ways that harm global
             | security, why would we assume open-source hardware will be
             | treated differently?_
             | 
             | > _A single compromised RISC-V chip in a power grid, data
             | center or weapons system could hand Beijing a quiet path
             | into critical infrastructure. The more these chips spread,
             | the greater the odds a vulnerability becomes a weapon._
             | 
             | I think the concern here is more with the implementations
             | (coming out of China) than the instruction set itself. Or
             | perhaps if there is some Verilog/VHDL code out there with
             | backdoors, and that then gets baked into chips.
        
       | usamoi wrote:
       | > The RISC-V ISA is already an industry standard and the next
       | step is impartial recognition from a trusted international
       | organization.
       | 
       | I'm confused. Isn't RISC-V International itself a trusted
       | international organization? It's hard to see how an organization
       | that standardizes screws and plugs could possibly be qualified to
       | develop ISAs.
        
         | BlobberSnobber wrote:
         | ISO defines standards for much more than bolts and plugs. A few
         | examples include: the C++ ISO standard, IT security standards
         | and workplace safety standards, and that's a small subset of
         | what they do.
         | 
         | They develop a well defined standard, not the technologies
         | mentioned in the standard. So yes, they're qualified.
        
           | tester756 wrote:
           | C++ "standard" sounds more like an example of why technology
           | should avoid standards
        
             | actionfromafar wrote:
             | If we are taking cheap potshots, there's a standard for
             | standards: https://xkcd.com/927/ or in the proposed XKCD
             | URI form xkcd://927
        
             | 112233 wrote:
             | Titanic is not an example of why building ships has to be
             | avoided. C++ is a great example, yes, of the damage
             | ambitious and egotistical personas can inflict when
             | cooperation is necessary.
        
             | usrnm wrote:
             | Say what you will about C++, but it is undoubtedly one of
             | the most successful and influential programming languages
             | in history.
        
               | high_na_euv wrote:
               | By which metric?
               | 
               | C, Java, Rust, JS, C# do exist
        
               | nutjob2 wrote:
               | > influential
               | 
               | It's certainly a cautionary tale
        
             | tialaramex wrote:
             | It is certainly an example of why SC22 is a bad idea
             | 
             | The "C++ Standards Committee" is Working Group #21 of Sub
             | Committee #22, of the Joint Technical Committee #1 between
             | ISO and the IEC.
             | 
             | It is completely the wrong shape of organization for this
             | work, a large unwieldy bureaucracy created so that
             | sovereign entities could somehow agree things, this works
             | pretty well for ISO 216 (the A-series paper sizes) and
             | while it isn't very productive for something like ISO 26262
             | (safety) it can't do much harm. For the deeply technical
             | work of a programming language it's hopeless.
             | 
             | The IETF shows a much better way to develop standards for
             | technology.
        
               | jcranmer wrote:
               | The fact that the C++ committee is technically a subgroup
               | of a subgroup of a subgroup is among the least of the
               | issues of ISO for standardization.
               | 
               | The main problem is that ISO is a net negative value-add
               | for standardization. At one point, the ISO editor came
               | back and said "you need to change the standard because
               | you used periods instead of commas for the decimal point,
               | a violation of ISO rules." Small wonder there's muttering
               | about taking C and C++ out of ISO.
        
               | tialaramex wrote:
               | I would argue that the structural problem is an
               | underlying cause. So it won't be the proximate cause, but
               | when you dig deeper, when you keep asking like a five
               | year old, "But why?" the answer is ultimately ISO's
               | structure and nothing to do with Bjarne's language in
               | particular.
               | 
               | Hence the concern for the non-language but still deeply
               | technical RISC-V standardization.
        
           | usamoi wrote:
           | But isn't RISC-V just a standard? ISO will decide what is
           | RISC-V and what isn't. Then its complicated process will
           | become an obstacle to innovation.
        
         | aDyslecticCrow wrote:
         | > It's hard to see how an organization that standardizes screws
         | and plugs could possibly be qualified to develop ISAs.
         | 
         | you my friend have not delved into the rabbithole that is
         | standardisation organizations.
         | 
         | ISO and IEC goes so far beyond bolts and screws it's frankly
         | dizzying how faar reaching their fingers are in our society.
         | 
         | As for why, the top comment explained it well; There is a
         | movement to block Risk-v adoption in the US for some
         | geopolitical shenanigans. A standardisation with a trusted
         | authority may help.
        
         | Someone wrote:
         | FTA: _"Since 1987, JTC 1 has overseen the standardization of
         | many foundational IT standards, including JPEG, MPEG, and the C
         | and C++ programming languages"_
         | 
         | Compared to ISO, RISC-V International has almost no experience
         | maintaining standards.
         | 
         | Even if you think that's isn't valuable, the reality is that
         | there is prestige/trustworthiness associated with an "ISO
         | standard" sticker, similar to how having a "published in
         | prestigious journal J" stickers gives scientific papers
         | prestige/trustworthiness.
        
       | sylware wrote:
       | I wonder why. Marketing? ISO tax mandatory to access some
       | specific markets? That said, they should be careful on what they
       | will pay in order to get an ISO stamp. And what parts of RISC-V
       | will be covered... because RVA may probably get significant
       | changes (after a while it may drop some hardware requirements
       | which are kind of only here to help port from legacy ISA to
       | RISC-V). Not to mention, it seems there are doubts about the core
       | memory reservation over ZACAS and only designers of large and
       | performant RISC-V implementations could answer that, and maybe
       | this is a fluke.
       | 
       | It weirdly feels too early.
       | 
       | ISO is often the source of feature creep in programming languages
       | or massive bloat (mechanically favoring some vendors) in file
       | formats. Namely, everything from ISO must be looked at in the
       | details to see if it is 'clean'.
        
       | thw_9a83c wrote:
       | It would be very cool to run the compiled code developed in an
       | ISO/IEC-standardized language on an ISO/IEC-standardized CPU. It
       | might even be standard-compliant.
        
       | childintime wrote:
       | I'd wish they'd write a test suite or certification program
       | instead.. Those ISO standard documents are nowadays better
       | parseable with a chatbot, but they are still the wrong language
       | for the job.
        
         | remexre wrote:
         | Test suites: https://github.com/riscv-software-src/riscv-tests
         | 
         | Formal model: https://github.com/riscv/sail-riscv
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-11-05 23:01 UTC)