For now market forces are not corroborating this though. For the 10 years it's been heralded as the saviour of open computing it's still very marginal, sadly.
One thing that could be an issue IMO is the extendability itself. Customised instruction sets means customised software, customised compilers to make the most of it, custom drivers, and basically a lot less reuse on the software side. So there has to be a really strong benefit to invest the time and money into this. The same reason that everyone is now using Linux instead of rolling their own OS: It's not always a great fit but it's just not worth the trouble to roll your own.
Arm and intel are pretty good at introducing new features to support new trends, like their encryption and virtualisation extensions that are now commonplace and really beneficial. Yes, they make mistakes too, but as a smaller company, can you really do better?
I would really like to see RISC-V take off but I have a feeling that its biggest benefits are also its biggest obstacles.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
