Analysis on the Possibility of RISC-V Adoption

Abstract

As the interface between hardware and software, Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs) play a key role in the operation of computers. While bothhardware and software have continued to evolve rapidly over time, ISAs have undergone minimal change. Since its release in 2010, RISC-V has begun to erode the industry aversion to ISA innovation. Established on the principals of the Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC), and as an open source ISA, RISC-V offers many benefits over popular ISAs like Intel’s x86 andArm Holding’s Advanced RISC Machine (ARM). In this literature review I evaluate the literature discussing: ●What makes changing Instruction Set Architectures difficult●Why might the industry choose to implement RISC-V When researching this topic, I visited the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), INSPEC (Engineering Village), and ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) digital library databases. I used the search terms, “RISC-V”, “Instruction Set Architecture”, “RISC-V” AND “x86”, and “RISC-V” AND “Instruction Set Architecture”. This literature review evaluates 10 papers on implementation of RISC-V. As this paper was 1 intended to cover recent developments in the field, publication dates were limited to from 2015 to present.