Remember: ARM is a liability at all levels. It is time to embrace RISC-V.

nvy · on Sept 1, 2023

Semiconductors being what they are, I don't see how a grassroots movement can drive adoption of something that essentially nobody's making.

Are there credible RISC-V based replacements for the Raspberry Pi, the STM32 blue/black pill, and the Cortex chips in phones?

Honest question, because I'd love to dabble in RISC-V but last time I checked the options were poorly-supported, expensive, and sparse.

snvzz · on Sept 1, 2023

>but last time I checked the options were poorly-supported, expensive, and sparse.

I recommend checking again, as growth has been exponential.

>Are there credible RISC-V based replacements for the Raspberry Pi, the STM32 blue/black pill, and the Cortex chips in phones?

I'd recommend a look at the market of publicly available cores[0], some lists of chips[1] and boards[2][3], and about MCUs specifically[4].

The one specific recommendation I'll make is to get VisionFive 2[5], the first mass-production RISC-V SBC from StarFive, with strong standards compliance and effort to upstream driver support[6].

0. https://riscv.org/exchange/?_sft_exchange_category=core,core...

1. https://muxup.com/2023q1/commercially-available-risc-v-silic...

2. http://krimsky.net/articles/riscvsbc.html

3. https://hackerboards.com/?cpu_architecture=RV64

4. https://codeberg.org/20-100/Awesome_RISC-V/raw/branch/master...

5. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starfive/visionfive-2

6. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan

nvy · on Sept 2, 2023

Thanks very much. Some light reading for when the kids are in bed!

fennecfoxy · on Sept 4, 2023

Well you've already been able to get a RV espressif esp for a while, wouldn't be surprised if they have several models by now.

snvzz · on Sept 5, 2023

They do. And there's a new, very interesting WCH32V family from some other company too.