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- Hacker News
- This likely makes sense because of some regulatory frameworks that require 'offical' standards.by panick21
- 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.by thw_9a83c
- 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.by childintime
- Test suites: https://github.com/riscv-software-src/riscv-tests
Formal model: https://github.com/riscv/sail-riscv
by remexre - 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.
by darksaints - 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.
by snvzz - 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.
by IshKebab - 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.by claudex
- 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...
by intsunny - > 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.
by usamoi - 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.
by Someone - > 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.
- 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.
- Why ISO? Why not somewhere that will allow people to read the standard for free?by charcircuit
- Not sure if this is a good idea given how ISO has been going for programming languages.by pjmlp
- Yeah. I think the ISO process would likely slow down the development of the ISA.by maxloh
- 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.
by axblount - This allows RISC-V international to propose their standards as ISO/IEC standards.
- 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).
by kouteiheika - Maybe it helps get government contracts
“We’re standards compliant”
by boredatoms - 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
by 6SixTy - 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.”
by jcelerier - 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...
by ryukoposting - 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'.
by sylware - 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.
by fork-bomber - > attempts by some incumbent ISAs to lobby the US government to curb the uptake of RISC-V
Is this real? Or FUD?
by phendrenad2 - > 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.
by Someone - 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.
by rdsubhas - 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.
by topspin