The Risc-V ISA is far more modular and extensible. Also we needed the 128 bit support for our NVM storage research and single address space OS work. No MMU, T-I

The Risc-V ISA is far more modular and extensible. Also we needed the 128 bit support for our NVM storage research and single address space OS work. No MMU, T-ISA based security, VIVT caches. Other govt projects do have ARM licenses, we chose not to go that way for purely technical reasons. Our lab does have academic collaboration with ARM.