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RISC-V has been around for some time now, and if you are here it’s because you have heard of it. But perhaps you still need to be convinced that it is the future? If you still wonder about its potential and benefits, here are 5 good things about RISC-V.

1. RISC-V is an open standard

Let’s start simple. This is nothing new, but let’s be clear on what open standard means.

Open standard does not necessarily mean open source. The RISC-V architecture is often described as “open-source”, which is inaccurate. As we explained it in this article on architecture licenses in the context of RISC-V, RISC-V is like C, Wi-Fi, or LTE with RISC-V International performing the role of (respectively) ANSI, IEEE 802.11 and 3GPP in defining and managing standards that people are free to implement as they choose. But that is a written standard – not an implementation or a microarchitecture. Just as is the case with those other open standards, RISC-V licenses can either be open-source or commercial.

Therefore, the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) is open, meaning that it is free and anyone can download the documentation to use it however they like, without asking for anyone’s permission. This is great because it allows smaller developers, companies, and groups such as academics to design and build hardware without paying an expensive proprietary ISA license and royalties. RISC-V is accessible to everyone.

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