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Thanks, I gathered as much about RISCV, but my question was maybe more basic, kind of eli5 of why would someone would use RISC for an application over x86 or AR

Thanks, I gathered as much about RISCV, but my question was maybe more basic, kind of eli5 of why would someone would use RISC for an application over x86 or ARM, what level of task requires or benefits from a reduced instruction set chip. I noticed alot of video games have used it.

einpoklum 7y ago
If you're "using RISC", that means that you're producing something that involves a processor. If you're just making software you just need to have it compile with common compilers and have the relevant libraries available on your target platform (ok, I'm over-simplifying), so you don't "use processoer X over Y". When you do use hardware, you're interested in things like power budget and price for comparable performance. RISC-V is now reaching competitiveness in some cases, and companies/people will now start choosing to use it on the merits. If, there is, there's an OS available and a bunch of supporting tools and libraries.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
If you're designing a new computer platform, do you care about power (i.e. does it need to run on batteries)? If so you probably want a RISC architecture rather than CISC (although the Intel Atom tries hard to be a low-power CISC machine). That leaves you with two choices: Arm (used in all smartphones, some Chromebooks, and Raspberry Pi) or RISC-V. Arm is more mature and there's a lot more software available, but it's not an open source architecture.