I first came across RISC for the end user back in 2012 when I had the chance to review a MIPS-powered, Android based tablet which was an eye opener. So when, more than a decade later, the chance to interview Chris Jones, Vice President of Products at RISC hardware startup, SiFive, came up, it was too good of an opportunity to pass.
SiFive has been in the news for espousing the RISC-V, the open source hardware paradigm that could be described as the next big thing in compute. At a time where Arm and x86 (Intel and AMD) are under growing pressure from the market to execute faster in an increasingly fragmented market where your biggest partners could often become your mightiest competitors (hello hyperscalers), RISC-V has the potential to shuffle the market is a way not seen for more than a decade. The third force may suddenly become a much, much bigger player as AI comes to the fore.
