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RISC-V has rapidly emerged as the leading standard Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) in the world of processor design and implementation. Unlike proprietary architectures, RISC-V is a standard that is open to anyone to build processor designs with, offering unprecedented opportunities for innovation. The significance of RISC-V, its impact on the tech industry, and the role of RISC-V International in fostering growth and development in this space span the full breadth of computing from small, lightweight processors to robust, high-performance processors. RISC-V continues to build market share from deep investment by multinational corporations to VCs partnering with start-ups, and from university classrooms to nations. Today, the RISC-V community includes tens of thousands of engineers across 70 countries with members and contributions equally spread across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

What is RISC-V?

RISC-V is a standard ISA that serves as a foundation for processor design. It enables communication and interoperability between hardware and software, providing a common language for software to control hardware through instructions like add, subtract, and multiply. Competitive differentiation is not at the ISA level of RISC-V. RISC-V is simply the connection between software and hardware, it does not determine what the implementation is. This is similar to Ethernet. Ethernet by itself is not the competitive implementation of what is on either end of that cable – Ethernet is simply the standard communication connection between two points.

Key points about RISC-V include:

• The RISC-V standard itself is not the competitive differentiator: Competition is in the implementation. The ISA is a publicly available standard such as USB, Ethernet, and Bluetooth, allowing anyone to build their own solutions based on the RISC-V standard.
• Design flexibility: RISC-V supports a broad ecosystem of open or proprietary intellectual property, giving developers the freedom to create custom solutions tailored to specific workloads.
• RISC-V continues to see massive growth and has already become the most prolific, globally adopted non-proprietary ISA standard in history, with more than 13 billion cores already in the market. An analyst report by The SHD Group indicates RISC-V SoC unit shipments are forecast to surge to 16.2B units, with revenues reaching $92B by 2030.

Advantages of RISC-V

1. Global community: RISC-V is supported by a global community that collaborates on technical standards, driving innovation and fostering a diverse ecosystem. The global community has contributed publicly available IP to the creation of a shared set of extensions that may be used with the base ISA. None of the extensions are proprietary, they are all open and publicly available.
2. Open collaboration: Open collaboration enables companies and developers to work together, sharing ideas and contributing to the evolution of the ISA and related extensions.
3. RISC-V is a standard, not open source. The RISC-V ISA and extensions go through a robust governance process to be ratified and frozen. The modular approach of a frozen standard ISA and extensions guard against fragmentation while enabling innovation.
4. Enhanced cybersecurity: Public review and scrutiny of the standard improves cybersecurity robustness and resilience.
5. Economic and technological value: The open nature of RISC-V promotes competition and encourages investment in new technologies. RISC-V has innovation potential for anyone by enabling freedom of design, an aspect that is out of reach on any other architecture due to proprietary licensing models that restrict the ability to innovate.

Engagement of Nations in RISC-V

Invest locally, engage globally. It is important to invest in the talent, companies, and institutions that compose the fabric of local economies. For long-term strategic success, investments to spur local growth must come with an international mindset, enabling access and opportunity to global development partners, supply chain, markets, and more.

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