NVIDIA to use RISC-V for its next-gen GPU microcontroller

Word is going around that the RISC-V open instruction set architecture (ISA) is picking up steam among chip makers. The RISC-V architecture has several major advantages versus existing architectures like ARM, it has no licensing cost, it's open source and chip makers can customize it as much as they want. This should result in chips that are more efficient and cheaper to manufacture than ARM-based processors.

Barron's reports RISC-V got a major endorsement recently as storage firm Western Digital announced it would switch its entire processor consumption to RISC-V:

Western Digital (WDC) recently gave its endorsement to RISC-V "as the company has pledged to transition its own consumption of processors to RISC-V."

"Western Digital ships over one billion cores per year, and plans to double that number,” notes Mobley.

"And if all goes according to plan, they will all be based on RISC-V, according to recent statement."

Additionally, the site reports NVIDIA is using RISC-V for its next-generation GPU microcontroller:

Mobley also points out that graphics chip titan Nvidia (NVDA) "quietly revealed that it’s going to build its next-generation GPU microcontroller on the RISC-V ISA,” which I had also learned independently from Patterson and from a company founded by one of his graduate students, SiFive.