RISC-V

Overview

RISC-V (pronounced "risk five") is an open-source hardware instruction set architecture (ISA) developed at UC Berkeley and now governed by RISC-V International, a global nonprofit standards body. Unlike proprietary ISAs such as x86 (Intel/AMD) and ARM (Arm Holdings), RISC-V is freely available for anyone to implement without licensing fees, making it attractive for custom silicon development, academic research, and companies seeking supply chain independence.

As of 2025, RISC-V is experiencing rapid growth within open source and open hardware communities and is increasingly appearing in enterprise data center discussions. Enterprise customers are evaluating RISC-V for workloads where energy efficiency and application-specific performance optimizations outweigh the software ecosystem maturity advantages of x86 and ARM. HPE's DC-MHS PnP (Plug and Play) program explicitly targets support for RISC-V boards alongside x86 and ARM in the same chassis — reflecting the industry expectation that future data centers will require flexible multi-ISA server infrastructure.