RISC-V

RISC-V is the open-standard Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) that eliminates proprietary licensing fees to enable custom silicon innovation.

Managed by RISC-V International (a Swiss-based non-profit), this modular architecture allows developers to build everything from low-power microcontrollers to high-performance data center processors. It supports 32, 64, and 128-bit address spaces. Industry giants like NVIDIA and Western Digital already ship millions of RISC-V cores annually. The design relies on a small base ISA (fewer than 50 instructions) supplemented by specialized extensions: such as 'V' for vector processing or 'C' for compressed instructions. This flexibility lets engineers optimize hardware for specific workloads (AI, IoT, or automotive) without the restrictive costs or vendor lock-in associated with ARM or x86.

https://riscv.org