RISC-V and Linux Foundations Partner to Promote Open Source CPU

'The Linux Foundation and RISC-V Foundation announced yesterday a joint collaboration project to promote open source development and commercial adoption of the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA),' reports TechRepublic:

Though some devices that integrate RISC-V will use real-time operating systems rather than Linux, the use of Linux in development will be instrumental as existing tools are being extended to support the RISC-V ISA when developing software on traditional computers. 'This joint collaboration with the Linux Foundation will enable the RISC-V Foundation to offer more robust support and educational tools for the active RISC-V community, and enable operating systems, hardware implementations and development tools to scale faster,' said Rick O'Connor, executive director of the RISC-V Foundation, in a press release.

In many ways, RISC-V is a hardware equivalent to the open source principles that guide the Linux project, as the ISA is open source, is not subject to patent encumbrances, and is available under the BSD license. [L]icensing fees for Arm or MIPS ISAs -- both of which are fundamentally RISC in principle -- can be avoided by using RISC-V.... As alternatives like Alpha, SuperH, MIPS, and even Intel's own Itanium processors have fallen by the wayside, organizations using those ISAs in their products have had difficult adjustment periods transitioning away, while patent encumbrances largely prevent third parties from continuing development or providing drop-in replacements for those technologies. RISC-V's open nature prevents these issues, as it is possible for any organization to extend or customize their own implementation, and any organization can produce their own RISC-V processors.
Manufacturers like how RISC-V CPUs aren't restricted to a single manufacturer, according to the article, which points out that NVIDIA and Western Digital have both announced plans to use RISC-V in some upcoming products.

RISC-V is also 'gaining popularity in Internet of Things, low-power, and embedded applications,' and Western Digital even plans to ultimately transition its annual consumption of processors -- one billion cores per yer -- to RISC-V.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.