If you read Micro Magic's press release it was clear (at least to me) that it was just a lab demonstration of their design tools and process technology and abso

If you read Micro Magic's press release it was clear (at least to me) that it was just a lab demonstration of their design tools and process technology and absolutely nothing like a product and not intended to be. If some of the press said something different that's not really Micro Magic's fault. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/micro-magic-inc-delivers-ultra-low-power-64-bit-risc-v-core-301227471.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/micro-magic-inc-del... I'm not sure what you mean by "vague promises". As far as I can see (and I've been following them for years), the major players such as Andes, SiFive, Western Digital, Alibaba (T-Head) carry through with what they promise. Sometimes they don't meet the schedule they initially announce, but that happens with everything. I sure wouldn't count Horse Creek as a "vague promise". Future chips from StarFive -- sure. Companies normally announce a CPU core when it's ready for licensing by chip designers. That means the RTL design is complete and is running at 10's of KHz in software simulation (e.g. Verilator) and 10's of MHz in a FPGA (or faster in the ultra-expensive stuff the EDA houses sell). Linux is booting, Dhrystone and Coremark and SPEC have been run. The design works and the performance per MHz is known with basically 100% accuracy. The only remaining question is what MHz a customer will get on some silicon process and with how much effort at physical layout. Well, and the question of whether they get any customers, and whether such customers make a product they announce, or something we never hear about because it is used internally in another product.