Imagesource: https://youtu.be/YT5vB3UqU_E

RISC-V CPUs have very little in common with 8 bit systems at first sight. (So please apologize) At second glance, however, there are a number of parallels that make this free ISA more than interesting for every 8 bit hobbyist.

On the one hand the ISA is free as in free beer 🍺. On the other hand it is - depending on the version - tremendously clear and therefore relatively easy to understand. It can be emulated wonderfully on modern hardware, and if you feel like it, you can convert your own implementation directly into hardware in the form of an FPGA.

If one could then get Linux to run ... but there was something with the missing MMU. 😫

Wait.

What?

Charles Lohr better known as @cnlohr debuted with a RISC-V emulator a few weeks ago, that can actually run a Linux kernel. The whole thing requires a customized distribution, of course, but it works. And it is sufficiently fast.

Imagine: A home-brew CPU that can run a modern operating system. A dream comes true. 😌 Charles' proof can be found here.