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The RISC-V debate is not about whether an open instruction set is valuable. It is about whether the base specification makes the right compromises for cheap controllers and broad implementation.
HN’s reply was strikingly practical: even critics who recognize the flaws still prefer an open ISA to a future built only on proprietary ones.
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RISCBoy fits on a $65 prototyping board, but nothing above the silicon was borrowed: a custom RISC-V core that passes the official compliance and formal-verification suites, a from-scratch graphics pipeline, and a complete KiCad PCB layout, all written solo in Verilog.
The thread placed the author fast — Wren also built the RP2040's DVI video trick — then produced a bigger reversal: the founder of an open-silicon shuttle service says a version of RISCBoy already got taped out as real hardware. He still doesn't know if it works.
