It's basically MIPS all over again

The conclusion is honest, and you can of course brute force any ISA into any role. I used to loathe x86 for that reason, but now that I'm older I respect the game.

> What does a cheap microcontroller core need? Let's inspect what they are used for. Typical use cases are to interface with and quickly reconfigure hardware blocks in a larger chip, eg in an MP3 player, an SD card, or a USB stick. The hard work is done by custom IP and the CPU core is just there to occasionally prod a register or configure something.

He forgot electronic cigarettes (vapes)

So … use RISC-V as the strawman, and create a community-based RISC-6 that doesn’t have these weaknesses? Better to get in now before it becomes too solidly entrenched.

RVA23 hardware is available (e.g. SpacemiT K3)

I can definitely see his argument, although I still do believe RISC-V did a lot of things better than x86...

I really do hope that the arch is eventually able to fix this. Better that there be an open ISA than them all be closed IMO.

> After being asked for the Nth time to explain, I decided to put it all down in one place so that I could simply link to it when asked next.

Bookmarked, because I've needed the same.

The worst part of all this is that they really should have known better by now. In 1980 you could make these kinds of mistakes, because this was pretty new territory. In 2020, doing this just makes you stupid. Or ignorant. Or both.

It's clear that RISC-V started as an academic exercise (albeit from a group with esteemed credentials) and they had to bolt on these hacks to make it work in industry.

Sad.