While the Arm architecture continues to expand its impact — we've updated our assessment of Arm in the cloud in this edition — interest in the newer and less established RISC-V architecture also grows. RISC-V doesn’t bring breakthroughs in performance or efficiency — in fact, its per-watt performance is similar to Arm’s, and it can't quite compete on absolute performance — but it’s open source, modular and not tied to a single company. This makes it an attractive proposition for embedded systems, where the cost of licensing proprietary architectures is a significant concern. This is also why the field of RISC-V for embedded is maturing, and several companies, including SiFive and espressif, are offering development boards and SoCs for a wide range of applications. Microcontrollers and microprocessors capable of running the Linux kernel are available today, along with the corresponding software stack and toolchains. We’re keeping an eye on this space and expect to see more adoption in the coming years.
