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Comment by legulere | Hacker News Reader

So I guess the thing currently keeping RISC-V from moving forward is ratification of the privileged spec, which is planned for end of 2017/2018?

https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Tue1115-Technic...

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I don't follow RISC-V development closely, so please define "moving forward". What are the steps you want to see taken?

Production of chips that support the privileged specification, which is needed for operating systems like Linux to run. So far there is only one microcontroller chip being produced.

Not exactly true. There exist different tapeouts in academia (e.g. http://asic.ethz.ch/2016/Patronus.html or http://asic.ethz.ch/2015/Imperio.html) as well as in industry (which are not public).

> privileged spec

I hope this refers to ring-0-like instructions such as x86 STI, and not some kind of OEM/manufacturer "you can only use this set of instructions if you pay us" type privilege?

Yes, indeed it is about ring-0, hypervisor type stuff.

https://github.com/riscv/riscv-isa-manual/blob/master/releas...

Who on earth is downvoting this? Get a grip

They're downvoting because the entirety of your comment was a (baseless) worry about the definition of a word that would have taken seconds to check.

Totally have time to read huge PDF's every day.

It has a section in the wikipedia page, which is right under that PDF in the search results.

Alternatively in the PDF you would only need to look at the "Introduction" section for a minute.

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