[marcodiego]

AFAIK this is a libre soc developed using libre software tools, some of which were developed by the group members themselves, free from royalties and independent from any for-profit institution. This is probably "librier" than RISCV.

The fact that the POWER architecture may be niche is not a problem since so much software can be compiled for it. See the thalos workstations: https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ and the powerpc notebook: https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/

For people who are willing to use niche hardware for more control on what is running, this is seems like a very important step.

[zozbot234]

RISCV is an ISA, not a core design much less a complete SoC. The closest comparison would be something like Rocket, or BOOM.