What Is RISC-V? Origins, Future and Can It Compete With x86

The push for open source is not limited to software; in fact, there is quite a big push for open-source hardware as well. The RISC-V foundation (pronounced "risk five"), founded in 2015, and the instruction set architecture (or ISA), also called RISC-V, are taking charge of open-source hardware. Although RISC-V's history goes back several decades, it is still a relatively unknown feature. But the fact that RISC-V isn't that important right now doesn't mean it won't be important in the future. So what is RISC-V? What are its origins? What is its future? Can it compete with x86?

What Is RISC-V?

RISC, most likely invented by computer scientist David Patterson, stands for reduced instruction set computer, which basically means that instructions are designed to be simpler and easier to process, as opposed to a complex instruction set computer or any CISC-based processor such as an x86 CPU. Ryzen 9 5950X or Core i9-12900KS.

So what does the -V mean? It is the Roman numeral for five, and RISC-V is a type of fifth-generation design. RISC-I and -II were developed in 1981, but RISC-III and -IV technically never existed. Those names are applied retroactively to SOAR, released in 1984, and SPUR, released in 1988. RISC-V sees itself as the successor to the 1988 architecture.

What Are the Origins of RISC-V?

RISC-V started as a research project at UC Berkeley's Parallel Computing Laboratory (or Par Lab), whose director is David Patterson. Professor Krste Asanović and graduate students Yunsup Lee and Andrew Waterman began designing RISC-V in May 2010. They were able to get funding through Par Lab, which was largely funded by Intel and Microsoft.

In 2011, the first RISC-V chip was taped out, meaning they finally had a prototype. In 2014, Asanović and Patterson published a paper making the case for open-source hardware, arguing that not only would a RISC-based ISA be ideal, but specifically RISC-V. The first RISC-V workshop was held in 2015, and that year 36 companies founded the RISC-V Foundation. Founding members include Nvidia, Google, IBM and Qualcomm.

What Will the Future of RISC-V Look Like?

One of the RISC-V Foundation's main focuses is the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) market. In its introductory presentation, RISC-V predicts there will be 50 billion actively used IoT devices by 2030, roughly double today's level. The presentation also gives another statistic: by 2025, 40% of application-specific integrated circuits (better known as ASICs) will be designed by OEMs. More companies will want to custom-design their own chips for their own products, and the RISC-V Foundation argues that the RISC-V architecture will make this possible.

The RISC-V Foundation is not only optimistic about the future, it is getting more and more optimistic. A survey in mid-2019 predicted that more than 60 billion RISC-V cores would be on the market by 2025. In late 2020, this was revised to around 80 billion, or around 14% of the entire CPU market.

RISC-V is talking big, but at least they have a reason. The foundation cites a 2020 survey concluding that about 23% of ASIC and field-programmable gate array (or FPGA) projects include at least one RISC-V processor. Hard drive maker Seagate is developing two RISC-V chips for hard drives and claims they perform three times better than other processors, although they must never have defined what the "other processors" are. Alibaba uses RISC-V in its Xuantie 910 server CPU.

At the beginning of 2020 there were about 600 RISC-V members. Today there are more than 2400. From 2022 to 2025, the RISC-V Foundation expects "the proliferation of RISC-V CPUs" across the entire CPU market: high-performance computing, cloud, IoT, enterprise, consumer and so on. Beyond 2025 it is V, because all the roadmaps seem to stop at that point, but if things go well for RISC-V over the next three years, we can expect more optimistic roadmaps for the years beyond 2025.

Can RISC-V Compete With x86?

It's too early to call. Since the RISC-V Foundation hopes to capture only 14% of the market, it certainly doesn't expect to surpass the x86 giants Intel and AMD before 2025, which is significant but still leaves the x86 duo mostly intact. Although RISC-V has big expectations, today the ISA is still not very popular in servers, laptops and desktops, which x86 dominates, while ARM dominates mobile devices and is making inroads into x86-dominated segments.

We can't say where RISC-V will end up, one way or another. What we can say is that there is major momentum for RISC-V and open-source hardware, and that energy has to go somewhere.

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