Software-defined processors: the promise of RISC-V
It’s an exciting time to be involved in open source. Linux powers the world’s most critical devices, a story to which Red Hat has always been a champion. Today we look further afield. We look to a world of not what “is” but what “could be”. It’s informed by the path we’ve walked and the lessons we’ve learned along the way. It’s a story of re-aligning goals in the spirit of community.
In the prior millennium, computers were designed behind closed doors. Compaq didn’t ask what folks wanted in an operating system… they *built* the operating system. As long as it conformed to POSIX, your software would be portable and could be compiled to run. It was a world of clearly defined amateurs working on MINIX versus those working on UNIX. One where folks might learn to design a processor using RISC if they were at UC Berkeley, but as soon as they graduated they were on to working on Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, x86, or a number of other smaller players.
If you were lucky enough to work on an academic team going through the full tape-out process of manufacturing a silicon processor, the licensing terms of any proprietary ISA would make it impossible to publish your research. This created a challenge, all of the practicing you did as a student could never _quite_ emulate what you would experience in the “real world” even at the pinnacle of the research.
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