Re: RISC-V fragmentation
When you look at what RISC-V is currently mainly used for, which is embedded devices, and when you compare those to the ARM equivalents, you see that ARM is just as fragmented. It doesn't matter though, as they are single purpose devices.
When it could be an issue is when RISC-V starts being used in phones, servers, PCs, etc., where the user acquires software separately and wants to run it. There, ARM has only recently started sorting itself out after a good deal of effort put in by various Linux trade groups.
What they can do with RISC-V is learn from the mistakes that ARM made and design chips that adopt similar solutions to ARM for things like device discovery in servers.
I hope by the way that nobody is under the impression that there isn't fragmentation in the x86 or ARM markets because both of those require a programmer to jump through a lot of hoops and do a lot of testing if you want to use anything other than the lowest common denominator features.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
