[HN Gopher] What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical
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What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical
Author : fork-bomber
Score : 70 points
Date : 2026-04-08 15:26 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ubuntu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ubuntu.com)
| mcdow wrote:
| I'm looking forward to using a RISC-V computer in 20 years
| znpy wrote:
| unironically, this.
|
| i've been hearing about arm computer for almost twenty years
| and only just recently general-purpose decently-priced arm
| laptops have been released (qualcomm laptops, the macbook neo).
|
| and arm desktop are still not a thing, in practice.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Well, Apple M1/M2/etc. are, technically, ARMv8, and they're
| available as desktops.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Also the Acorn Archimedes is, technically, an ARM / RISC
| desktop.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| Distant memories of a 1980s London classroom.
| andai wrote:
| I think the Surface Laptops (2018?) count, and arguably the
| previous models (2012+) sorta-kinda count (tablet +
| keyboard).
|
| Side note: It's kinda funny to me that "the keyboard is
| detachable, the screen is glass and you can touch/write on
| it" makes it "lesser" than a laptop rather than being an
| upgrade.
|
| But yeah, definitely happy to see more in this space. Now we
| just need e-Paper laptops to take off as well :)
| mavhc wrote:
| I have an ARM desktop from 1986 or 1987
|
| https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/A500.h.
| ..
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > arm desktop are still not a thing
|
| The desktop market is not the only product space anymore.
|
| Apple has had brilliant success with its ARM processors,
| proving that ARM is more than capable. Before Apple's switch,
| Chromebooks had been using ARM since 2011.
|
| Android is the dominant operating system in mobile and most
| Android devices use the ARM platform. Many of these devices
| have desktop capability -- they are a viable _convergence
| platform_.
| 3abiton wrote:
| While its current performance is not competitive, there are
| currently interesting options. I got the orange pi riscv
| version, mainly to test riscv while it's slow compared to other
| arm socs, it's still better than I expected. There are even
| risc v TPUs now.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| This underestimates the will of governments and companies
| Europe and especially China to reduce their dependency on US-
| controlled technology.
| Tostino wrote:
| I hope our complacent companies get a shot of competition.
| wk_end wrote:
| ARM isn't US controlled, is it? British and also now Japanese
| since it's owned by SoftBank.
|
| Meanwhile, wouldn't China be more heavily invested in
| Longsoon?
| aappleby wrote:
| You're probably already using a RISC-V computer, it's just
| embedded as a supervisor in some other gadget (or vehicle) you
| own.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think 10 years is a more realistic estimate. Probably first
| in servers and Android phones.
| wg0 wrote:
| Donald Trump might make it five.
| bityard wrote:
| I already have one! (But it's technically a soldering iron...)
| mikestorrent wrote:
| You could use one of the small development boards for now, but
| everyone's waiting for Ascalon
| stuxnet79 wrote:
| Not my area of expertise but what exactly is the difference
| between RISC-V and Power PC? Didn't Power-PC get a good run in
| the 90s and 2000s? Just wondering why there's renewed interest in
| RISC-like architectures when industry already had a good
| exploration of that area.
| Chyzwar wrote:
| It is Chinese companies looking for ARM alternative that push
| this otherwise mediocre ISA.
|
| It is possible that ARM based CPUs will start eating x86 market
| slowly. See snapdragon X2 and upcoming Nvidia CPU. Maybe in 10
| years new computers will be ARM based and a lot of IoT will run
| on risc-5.
| topspin wrote:
| "It is Chinese companies looking for ARM alternative"
|
| The V in RISC-V represents iteration of the ISA, over the
| last 46 years, most of which occurred in the US, mainly at
| Berkeley.
| aappleby wrote:
| Why "mediocre"? I've written production assembly language for
| a half-dozen different processor architectures and RISC-V is
| my favorite by far.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| You should write an article on that explaining why you like
| it to the common man
| mikestorrent wrote:
| x86_64 machines are RISC under the hood and have been for ages,
| I believe; microcode is translating your x64 instructions to
| risc instructions that run on the real CPU, or something akin
| to that. RISC never died, CISC did, but is still presented as
| the front-facing ISA because of compatibility.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Ah, PowerPC. For a RISC processor it surely had a _lot_ of
| instructions, most of them quite peculiar. But hey, it had
| fixed-length instruction encoding and couldn 't address memory
| in instructions other than "explicit memory load/store", so it
| was RISC, right?
| Animats wrote:
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| shakna wrote:
| There's an email signup box on the right side on desktop, or
| bottom of the page on mobile. Maybe you somehow managed to hit
| it, or see it during some component update.
| ljhsiung wrote:
| > Enabling new business models
|
| This is true, but only for the bigger players. The nature of
| hardware still fundamentally favors scale and centralization.
| Every hyper-scalar eventually gets to a size that developing in-
| house CPU talent is just straight up better (Qcom and Ventana +
| Nuvia, Meta and Rivos, Google's been building their own team,
| Nvidia and Vera-Rubin, God help Microsoft though). This does not
| bode well for RISC-V companies, who are just being used as a
| stepping stone. See Anthropic, who does currently license but is
| rumored to develop their own in-house talent [1].
|
| > Extensibility powers technology innovation
|
| >> While this flexibility could cause problems for the software
| ecosystem...
|
| "While" is doing some incredible heavy lifting. It is not enough
| to be able to run Ubuntu, as may be sufficient for embedded
| applications, but to also be _fast_. Thusly, there are many
| hardcoded software optimizations just for a CPU, let alone ARM or
| x86. For RISC-V? Good luck coding up every permutation of an
| extension that exists, and even if it 's lumped as RVA23, good
| luck parsing through 100 different "performance optimization
| manuals" from 100 different companies.
|
| > How mature is the software ecosystem?
|
| 10 years ago, when RISC-V was invented, the founders said 20
| years. 10 years later, I say 30 years.
|
| The nature of hardware as well, is that the competition (ARM) is
| not stationary as well. The reason for ARM's dominance now is the
| failure of Intel, and the strong-arming of Apple.
|
| I have worked in and on RISC-V chips for a number of years, and
| while I am still a believer that it is the theoretical end state,
| my estimates just feel like they're getting longer and longer.
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-weighs-
| building-i...
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I stopped listening to what Canonical says. They often get
| involved in things and disturb the ecosystem then abandon stuff
| or dig a "not invented here" hole.
|
| Unity, Bazaar, Mir, Upstart, Snap, etc.
|
| All of them had existing well established projects they attempted
| to uproot for no purpose other than Canonical wanted more control
| but they can't actually operate or maintain that control.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Not sure on the timelines, but snap, upstart and Mir were all
| attempts at evolving Linux ecosystem that lost to RedHat-backed
| systems. Unity was legit abandoned, and bazaar... Not sure what
| they were trying to solve there with git and forges already
| existing.
| justinclift wrote:
| Also LXD - Incus: https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/
| storus wrote:
| Will RISC-V end up with the same (or even worse) platform
| fragmentation as ARM? Because of absence of any common platform
| standard we have phones that are only good for landfill once
| their support lifetime is up, drivers never getting upstreamed to
| Linux kernel (or upstreaming not even possible due to completely
| quixotic platforms and boot protocols each manufacturer creates).
| RISC-V allows even higher fragmentation in the portions of
| instruction sets each CPU supports, e.g. one manufacturer might
| decide MUL/DIV are not needed for their CPU etc. ("M" extension).
| hajile wrote:
| RVA23 is the standard target for compilers now. If you support
| newer stuff, it'll take a while before software catches up
| (just like SVE in ARM or AVX in x86).
|
| If you try to make your own extensions, the standard compiler
| flags won't be supporting it and it'll probably be limited to
| your own software. If it's actually good, you'll have to get
| everyone on board with a shared, open design, then get it added
| to a future RVA standard.
| indolering wrote:
| The answer is unequivocally yes: RISC-V is designed to be
| customizable and a vendor can put whatever they like into a
| given CPU. That being said, profiles and platform specs are
| designed to limit fragmentation. The modular design and core
| essential ISA also makes fat binaries much more straight-
| forward to implement than other ISAs.
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