yeah, RISC started the concept of Branch Prediction. It's just that nobody has tried to crack these microbrew processor because of their tiny userbase.
It's not clear to me what you mean by this. I believe DEC filed the first branch-prediction patent, in 1989; that was for the Alpha, which was indeed a RISC CPU (back when the RISC/CISC distinction was still useful). But you seem to be implying that has some relationship to RISC-V, which is far from clear. All but the smallest modern general-purpose CPUs use speculative execution, including branch prediction.
Freedom demands Open Hardware also (Score:0)
OpenCores.org
J-Core.org
riscv.org
gaisler.com
OpenSPARC
There is a path forward, but it will take Fab relationships and people willing to test and then buy the first practical and fully open systems...
Re: (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure about others but some are available for purchase.
"SiFive has declared that 2018 will be the year of RISC V Linux processors" [slashdot.org] - Linux Now Has its First Open Source RISC-V Processor, Slashdot.
To answer AC's question a few moths later: "What's the big advantage with RISC over ARM or x86?"
Meltdown, Spetre.
Re: (Score:0)
yeah, RISC started the concept of Branch Prediction. It's just that nobody has tried to crack these microbrew processor because of their tiny userbase.
Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also (Score:1)
RISC started the concept of Branch Prediction
It's not clear to me what you mean by this. I believe DEC filed the first branch-prediction patent, in 1989; that was for the Alpha, which was indeed a RISC CPU (back when the RISC/CISC distinction was still useful). But you seem to be implying that has some relationship to RISC-V, which is far from clear. All but the smallest modern general-purpose CPUs use speculative execution, including branch prediction.