Your argument is general, but these are very specific areas being served. * RISC-V Vector instructions seem like a huge win for all forms of HPC. x86 is gettin

Your argument is general, but these are very specific areas being served. * RISC-V Vector instructions seem like a huge win for all forms of HPC. x86 is getting vector instructions & the wins have been immense. Rather than a wide range of specific SIMD instructions, vector instructions seem like a far more general & easier to scale up & down implementation strategy. Not everyone has to implement! * RISC-V Hypervisor specifications seem required for modern computing, where VM's are commonplace. Have to have this specification. Not everyone has to implement! * RISC-V Scalar Cryptography specifications providing accelorated cryptography seems like another have to have modern in data-centers. Worth re-iterating what's been said already: extensions are just that: extensions. They're not required. I'm not sure what the current state is, of code detecting & use the accelerated implementation when available, using soft-fallbacks otherwise. For things like cryptography, usually it's a library, openssl or someone, where the library is the reference implementation, with special paths written in for using harware where available.