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by rbanffy 1741 days ago
We’ve been through this here on HN. The board is designed around a chip that really wants to be a router. This is a bit expensive for a desktop workstation and will cater to people really determined to make this the year of the RISC-V desktop rather than the average developer, such as myself, who, while considering x86s disgusting, still buys them because they are cost-effective.
2 comments

Why do you feel this is optimized as a router, are you mixing it up with the SolidRun HoneyComb ARM system ?
Oops... I think I did. Sorry.
Why is X86 disgusting?
It's a matter of taste, but x86 has a lot of historical cruft because it's been around long enough to see 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit industry transitions. Off the top of my head, x86 memory segmentation and fragmentation between BIOS vs. UEFI and ACPI vs. the absence of device trees (AFAIK).
But it is kinda cool to run software that originally was built for the 8088 on an AMD Threadripper. But yes, I do agree the x86 architecture is fast losing its lustre.
Ugly ugly ugly ISA. We throw away a little bit of performance and a lot of power because of how weird and old it is.