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by Havoc 885 days ago
How difficult is working with risc v currently?

I’m guessing back Linux works but most precompiled stuff not?

3 comments

Nearly all Linux packages you might want to install - work with nothing special required. Migration to ARM earlier this century made vast majority of open source software portable. Precompiled x86-only surely will not work.
Debian officially supports RISC-V and is about there[0].

Whereas qemu-user will run e.g. x86 and arm binaries, should you ever need to.

This recent review of VisionFive2[1] has a little more info. There they even run popular games via x86 emulation.

0. https://buildd.debian.org/stats/

1. https://boilingsteam.com/vision-five-2-board-review/

Not an expert, but I think anything compiled for the ISA implementation you have should work.

If there's an issue with RISC-V it's that it's not one ISA with additional instructions accumulating across generations (which I think describes x86), it's a core ISA with a variety of extension blocks that might or might not be present in your implementation. I think this means that any random RISC-V binary stands a greater chance of not working on a chip you've bought than e.g. any random x86 binary with an x86 chip.

x86 has this problem too. Base x86 doesn't even support floating point. (and x87 which was the og way is now basically deprecated).