[Symmetry]

Variable length instructions, so long as they're easy to decode, have always been present in the range of ISAs commonly called "RISC" and this new one from MIPS is no different. Except for the encoding it's basically the same thing MIPS has always been.

[baobrien]

Yep. RISC-V has had easy to decode variable length instructions from day one in the compressed ISA extension. The base user-mode ISA has a set of simple encoding rules for variable-length instructions from 16b to 192b in 16b increments, and room to grow beyond that should the need arise. The current set of extensions only use 32b and 16b encoding space.