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- Modular laptop vendor Framework has said it will launch a RISC-V product in 2025
- RISC-V is the hardware equivalent of Linux, open source and free
- More tech companies have adopted it but it has yet to hit the mainstream in a significant way
RISC-V, an open source ISA developed at the University of California, Berkeley in 2010, has steadily gained attention as a customizable alternative to proprietary ISAs such as x86 and arm.
Its license-free approach allows manufacturers to create and modify processors without restrictions, leading to adoption in various specialized applications, and this year could mark a key step towards wider consumer adoption of the architecture.
For RISC-V to truly reach the mainstream, it also needs to gain traction in the laptop market. Hong Kong-based DeepComputing introduced the first RISC-V notebook, the Roma, in 2023, followed by the DC-Roma II in 2024, which shipped with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled. While praised for its open-source flexibility, the laptop’s performance lagged behind the x86 and Arm alternatives – but speaking to IEEE spectrumDeepComputing CEO Yuning Liang said the company’s upcoming DC-Roma III will close that gap with performance comparable to the Arm Cortex-A76.
Enter Framework
Perhaps even more exciting, DeepComputing is partnering with Framework, a company known for its modular and repairable laptops, to create a RISC-V motherboard for the Framework Laptop 13. Nirav Patel, CEO of Framework, said: “If we look a couple of generations down [software] stack, we’re starting to see a line of sight to consumer-ready RISC-V in something like a laptop, or even a phone.
According to IEEE spectrum“Although still aimed at early adopters and developers, it will be the most accessible and cleanest RISC-V laptop, and will ship to users with the same look and feel as Framework laptops using x86 chips.”
Afterwards the initial announcement in June 2024, Framework launched a product page for the RISC-V motherboard, but remains a placeholder.
The DeepComputing site however, it reveals more details, including images of the DC-Roma RISC-V Mainboard for the Framework 13 Laptop, one of which you can see at the top of the page. The board is powered by the RISC-V 64-bit quad-core CPU JH7110, and supports both Ubuntu Desktop 24.04 and Fedora 41.
RISC-V has already been embraced by a number of technology companies. Western Digital uses it for storage controllers, British startup Blueshift memoryThe BlueFive processor is built on an open-source RISC-V core, the Chinese XiangShan project developed two RISC-V designs, and Place has a universal RISC-V processor that consolidates all computing workloads into a single, affordable chip.
We’ll likely see more details on the RISC-V Laptop 13 Framework in the coming months, but given the current focus on developers and early adopters, along with performance limitations compared to established architectures like x86 and Arm, it seems fair to say that while this is undeniably a big step forward for the architecture, RISC-V is not yet ready for mainstream consumer adoption.
