RISC-V is a free and open microprocessor instruction set architecture (ISA). But is that why it matters? Here’s my take.Some of my other RISC-V videos includ...
Eventually, yes. But it’s risky to put timelines on things.
CPUs are already not the limiting factor. With enough cores, mobile CPUs are fine for most situations. It’s GPU speed that affects most people, and that’s because of games.
There are 4 main bottlenecks in computers, and they generally take turns being the most relevant. CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage. Bus speed can also be a bottleneck, but that is generally factored in and we know how to make faster buses for the most part, using parallelization if nothing else.
Right now, for home computer use, GPU is the biggest factor. Good thing, too, because CPUs are plateauing, and will probably require a fundamental change in architecture or programming techniques to get past it.
You still need base CPU speed for a system to be usable. Try running a modern GPU on a 10 year old CPU. It’s even worse for some, where the GPU driver needs a relatively fast CPU for the GPU to run at full speed. Mostly Intel GPUs have this issue, which is sad cause they are the most affordable, but can’t be paired with an just an affordable CPU (or an older one).
And we’re very far away with RISC-V from the kind of performance your need to run modern games, or even decade old games. Let alone fully utilizing a high end GPU.
And most people don’t complain about computers being slow anymore. And when they do, it’s usually because of memory, disc, or network speeds. It’s almost never because of CPU cycles. The people complaining about performance that’s related to cycles are usually complaining about GPU processing.
It’s almost never a CPU power issue, anymore. Unless you’re a developer or scientist, and you’re actually trying to compute something. I have two beefy computers in my house - my desktop, for coding, and my media server, because Jellyfin insists on transcoding everything. The rest are all ARM, and mostly old ARM, and they’re all perfectly capable of doing their jobs. RISCV would be, too.
Eventually, yes. But it’s risky to put timelines on things.
CPUs are already not the limiting factor. With enough cores, mobile CPUs are fine for most situations. It’s GPU speed that affects most people, and that’s because of games.
There are 4 main bottlenecks in computers, and they generally take turns being the most relevant. CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage. Bus speed can also be a bottleneck, but that is generally factored in and we know how to make faster buses for the most part, using parallelization if nothing else.
Right now, for home computer use, GPU is the biggest factor. Good thing, too, because CPUs are plateauing, and will probably require a fundamental change in architecture or programming techniques to get past it.
You still need base CPU speed for a system to be usable. Try running a modern GPU on a 10 year old CPU. It’s even worse for some, where the GPU driver needs a relatively fast CPU for the GPU to run at full speed. Mostly Intel GPUs have this issue, which is sad cause they are the most affordable, but can’t be paired with an just an affordable CPU (or an older one).
And we’re very far away with RISC-V from the kind of performance your need to run modern games, or even decade old games. Let alone fully utilizing a high end GPU.
“Most people” do not play video games at all.
And most people don’t complain about computers being slow anymore. And when they do, it’s usually because of memory, disc, or network speeds. It’s almost never because of CPU cycles. The people complaining about performance that’s related to cycles are usually complaining about GPU processing.
It’s almost never a CPU power issue, anymore. Unless you’re a developer or scientist, and you’re actually trying to compute something. I have two beefy computers in my house - my desktop, for coding, and my media server, because Jellyfin insists on transcoding everything. The rest are all ARM, and mostly old ARM, and they’re all perfectly capable of doing their jobs. RISCV would be, too.