[Discuss] Is RISC-V ready for prime time?

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Rich Pieri)]

On Fri, 19 Jun 2026 22:36:18 -0400
"Dale R. Worley" <Dale.Worley at comcast.net> wrote:

> But my question is about the whitebox PC shop around the corner, not
> the makers of widgets with embedded computers.  Of course, that
> latter is the bulk of industrial use of computers, but again, I'm not
> interested in that.

The very short answer is "yes".

The core architecture definitely is ready but this has caveats. A
modern ARM SOC comes with a slew of performance and security extensions
which in RISC-V space are still under development. Similar for complex
software stacks which are functional but may not yet be feature
complete (in the same sense that Btrfs is functional but not yet
feature complete). Developer boards are aimed at people developing this
software.

Could a vendor like System 76 or framework produce a consumer grade
RISC-V based personal computer for general use today? Yes. And most
users probably wouldn't ever see any of the rough spots except that it
would be expensive (due to manufacturing scale), slow, and have
terrible battery life for anything portable compared to a similarly
priced ARM based system.

Essentially this but with the newer target revision.

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/dc-roma-ii-fastest-risc-v-laptop-and-odd/

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