Former SiFive employee here... Sure, RISC-V is the wave of the future, but there's more to a hot chip than an open/free ISA. RISC-V is a few years out from di

Former SiFive employee here... Sure, RISC-V is the wave of the future, but there's more to a hot chip than an open/free ISA. RISC-V is a few years out from directly competing w/ Intel, but it's advancing very quickly. Also worth looking at what StarFive is doing. They seemed to avoid a few corporate missteps SiFive fell prey to (no. I'm not saying SiFive is dying. I'm saying StarFive was able to learn from SiFive's mistakes and seem to be growing even faster.) The RISC-V community still feels very "academic" and seems to eschew people with real-world experience. Maybe that's for the better. Maybe it's better to ignore the things industry did wrong in the past. But If you're from the Arm or MIPS communities, it feels a tiny bit stuffy. Also, you need a Ph.D. to be taken seriously. Most importantly... I would really love to buy one of these boards. But it sounds like that's in the distant future.