RISC-V (pronounced risk-five ) is a free and open ISA enabling a new era of processor innovation through open standard collaboration. Founded in 2015, the RISC-V ISA delivers a new level of free, extensible software and hardware freedom on architecture, paving the way for the next 50 years of computing design and innovation.
In contrast to most ISAs, the RISC-V ISA can be freely used for any purpose, permitting anyone to design, manufacture and sell RISC-V chips and software. While not the first open architecture ISA, it is significant because it is designed to be useful in modern computerized devices such as warehouse-scale cloud computers, high-end mobile phones and the smallest embedded systems. Such uses demand that the designers consider both performance and power efficiency. The instruction set also has a substantial body of supporting software, which avoids a usual weakness of new instruction sets. The RISC-V ISA has been designed with small, fast, and low-power real-world implementations in mind, but without over-architecting for a particular micro architecture style.