The ESD Alliance hosted an engrossing evening in the early days of RISC-V featuring two of its authors. At the time, RISC-V was a fledgling concept and it’s doubtful anyone there that night would have believed how quickly it was adopted across the semiconductor industry.
On the eve of the RISC-V Summit North America, it’s a great time to look back on its beginning and how it became a semiconductor industry phenomenon. For answers, I turned to Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, and Tiffany Sparks, its Director of Marketing.
Smith: RISC-V as an open standard is starting to take root in the mainstream semiconductor industry and it’s not just DYIers or hobbyists. What’s changed? Is this the wave of the future?
Redmond: Due to RISC-V being an open standard, the playing field is level, enabling companies of all sizes to engage in custom computing without the traditional challenges associated with licensing, royalties, and design limitations in proprietary models. Combined with the open foundational architecture of RISC-V, this reduced barrier to entry is a significant factor why RISC-V is taking root, and why it is here to stay.
More than 3,900 RISC-V members across 70 countries contribute and collaborate to define RISC-V open specifications as well as convene and govern related technical, industry, domain, and special interest groups. While our roots were born in academia, industry stakeholders were invested from the beginning. As new workloads demanded a more flexible and open design approach, investment in RISC-V began to soar.
RISC-V is an open, global standard. This is a critical distinction in that we freeze and ratify the essential specifications. As an open standard, anyone may leverage RISC-V as a building block in their open or proprietary solutions and services. This created a new model for companies of all sizes to engage in custom compute.
RISC-V is a transformative force shaping the future of hardware and software design and computing. As for the future, I would say it is here to stay.
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