Re: Some serious questions.
“Wild” is changing CPU family, just because of differences in how some module manufacturers hook up the pin out on the module.
“Intel for some reason”….but we all know what the reason is. A small niche customers apparently care, and there is a solution for them, at the module level. If it were a larger niche, Intel would make a separate CPU without ME. But that would increase costs, to support more SKUs, and they assess that having the module manufacturer solve their problem is just fine. This isn’t really that complicated.
It’s just nonsensical to say “[RISCV] is a CPU architecture that doesn’t have this feature”, because the feature isn’t part of a CPU core architecture at all. And even if it were, RISCV is an ISA, not an architecture. What I think you are confused about, is that you really mean “Intel has this chosen to implement this feature [on x86 chips], whereas the companies that would like to manufacture RISCV chips if they could make it commercially viable, currently have no plans to implement the feature”
If you think the chip that Esperanto or SiFive make is so great, buy it! Oh look, *they aren’t selling them as a volume proposition*. Look what happened to SiFive:
https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched
Take a step back. Really?
NOTE: Due to incredible customer demand, we quickly sold out of our production run of HiFive Unmatched boards; with COVID-related supply chain issues, we have decided to focus on the upcoming, more powerful development system based on the Horse Creek SoC and platform co-developed with Intel rather than trying to restart HiFive Unmatched production.
So….they sold “ a lot” whatever that is. But couldn’t make it at the price they needed to sell it, and had no industrial muscle. I bet *I* can sell lots of ten pound notes at five pounds each. It’s not hard.
And at a time when every other semiconductor company was making out like bandits….they decided *not* to attempt to sell stuff; and partner up will Intel instead. That’s Evil Intel to you.
Do you think this Horse Creek SoC will have an ME on it? Bet it does.