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I guess the privileged ISA still being a draft prevents full application processors from being rolled out. But is there anything preventing micro-controllers be

I guess the privileged ISA still being a draft prevents full application processors from being rolled out. But is there anything preventing micro-controllers being mass produced? Why isn't there an Arduino with a RISC-V micro-controller yet?

_chris_ 10y ago
lowrisc.org? This stuff takes time. Also there are shipping products using RISC-V, but they aren't user accessible (e.g., cameras).
jabl 10y ago
Like another poster answer, there is the lowrisc effort that is probably closest to bringing out a risc-V micro-controller board? In general, I wonder, what are the economics of producing micro-controller chips? I assume there is something like a minimum chip complexity (number of transistors), below which it doesn't make the thing cheaper since you need to produce a package big enough to have pins to connect to the outside world? And as feature sizes are reduced, that minimum complexity goes up? And of course, for something like a hobbyist product like Arduino, the price of the micro-controller chip itself must be a (very) small fraction of the price of the board? All this being a long-winded way of saying I hope that a hypothetical RISC-V based micro-controller board wouldn't be noticeably more expensive than an equivalent 8-bit AVR micro-controller board? Oh, and compatibility with Arduino shields, and programmable with Rust. And a pony.
- legulere 10y ago
  But lowrisc wants to be a full processor with MMU and everything able to run Linux (just without a graphics card)?
  - jabl 10y ago
    Yes, lowrisc seems to be more like a Raspberry Pi than an Arduino. But if it's cheap enough, does it matter? You don't have to install a full Linux kernel, you can just run your micro-controller code directly on the metal?
    - unwind 10y ago
      It might "matter" because doing a full application-level chip is more work than doing a limited microcontroller-level chip. Thus time to market (as in "I wanna play with this nooow") is improved for the latter approach.

_chris_ 10y ago

lowrisc.org? This stuff takes time. Also there are shipping products using RISC-V, but they aren't user accessible (e.g., cameras).

jabl 10y ago

Like another poster answer, there is the lowrisc effort that is probably closest to bringing out a risc-V micro-controller board? In general, I wonder, what are the economics of producing micro-controller chips? I assume there is something like a minimum chip complexity (number of transistors), below which it doesn't make the thing cheaper since you need to produce a package big enough to have pins to connect to the outside world? And as feature sizes are reduced, that minimum complexity goes up? And of course, for something like a hobbyist product like Arduino, the price of the micro-controller chip itself must be a (very) small fraction of the price of the board? All this being a long-winded way of saying I hope that a hypothetical RISC-V based micro-controller board wouldn't be noticeably more expensive than an equivalent 8-bit AVR micro-controller board? Oh, and compatibility with Arduino shields, and programmable with Rust. And a pony.

legulere 10y ago
But lowrisc wants to be a full processor with MMU and everything able to run Linux (just without a graphics card)?
- jabl 10y ago
  Yes, lowrisc seems to be more like a Raspberry Pi than an Arduino. But if it's cheap enough, does it matter? You don't have to install a full Linux kernel, you can just run your micro-controller code directly on the metal?
  - unwind 10y ago
    It might "matter" because doing a full application-level chip is more work than doing a limited microcontroller-level chip. Thus time to market (as in "I wanna play with this nooow") is improved for the latter approach.