this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Whoa. Big miscalculation.
Maybe a big miscalculation to adopt it. The lead developer lists many important reasons for dropping it, including:
You're probably right. But, point by point
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It was probably the right decision for Chimera. We all have to prioritize. I love RISC architecture, ever since college and CPU architecture classes, and back when I was still writing Assembly on occasion. And, yet, I still don't own a RISC-V computer. I'll probably be in the "early majority" group somewhere.
I don't believe it's a miscalculation to adopt it if you can afford to. Early adopters have later advantages, in experience and mindshare. This may come back to bite them; maybe not.
I will say this, though: although I'm not the target and I really don't understand the appeal of mobile gaming, it's a space where RISC-V really could be an overnight game-changer. Its extensibility and configurability, and low cost of entry for CPU makers, makes it an ideal target for a submarine hardware developer who's focusing on gaming, and releases a core that outperforms ARM in graphics and AI tasks. It makes it a great platform form one of Apple's notorious architecture shifts - they have enough money to develop an in-house powerhouse chip, and they've built bespoke CPUs before. If that happens, this decision will, in retrospect, look like a terrible mistake; Chimera will be a late majority adopter scrambling to add support. No-one who's buying The Thing (whatever it is) will be thinking "Chimera!" They'll be just yet another distribution in a sea of late majority adopters.
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