I don't think Bitmanip is special but pretty much required for reaching feature-parity with ARM and x86 so that you could start comparing them. RISC-V is otherw

I don't think Bitmanip is special but pretty much required for reaching feature-parity with ARM and x86 so that you could start comparing them. RISC-V is otherwise quite spartan, which might be desirable for embedded MCUs, but for application-class processors you'd want more. For example, an indexed load which on ARM and x86 is one instruction could on RISC-V require four dependent instructions without Bitmanip and two with. The vector extension is RISC-V's closest counterpart to SSE/AVX, although it is not used for scalar floating-point. BTW, the RISC-V foundation has published official Application Profiles for application-class processors. Those are probably going to be baseline for binary distributions in the future — they include Bitmanip and more. The RVA23 profile has Vector. Google's requirements for Android (with Google services) will also include vector cryptography.