> What I find lacking in web pages is a motivation

From those pages:

"The purpose of Kefir project is producing an independent C17/C23 compiler with well-rounded architecture and well-defined scope that is feasible for implementation by a single developer."

He wants a third compiler to vet code portability. He wants it simple enough to build and maintain himself.

How fast is the “new” Commodore 64?

Have not heard much about it since launch. Although, now that I look, it seems they are just shipping now.

https://www.commodore.net/product-page/commodore-64-ultimate...

RAM can be increased to 16 MB and CPU speed to 48 GHz.

I’m sorry how many Hz???

The 64Ultimate goes to 64MHz, the Ultimate64 cartridge goes to 48MHz "only".

Linux benefits long term from the fragmentation that hurts it in the short-term. Competing projects means it is harder for software to go too far down the wrong road. Go to far and somebody emerges to replace you. And popular ideas emerge that others can copy from.

With macOS, you really have no choice to use what Apple offers. You can hope they listen to dissent but they may not depending on priorities. And things have to be bad enough to jump platforms before real dissent registers. And things have to get pretty bad for that.

Same issue with Windows of course.

With GNOME, KDE, COSMIC, and the Linux rat pack, it is easy to switch experiences without ditching Linux entirely. And somebody has probably even patched your DE of choice to address the papercuts you do not like.

Why did he prefer it to RISC-V? Just more mature or some architectural advantage?

I'm going to chalk it up to general techno-political ideology, but RISC-V was just as inaccessible in those days too.

Nowadays I'm happy to report that my soldering iron is running RISC-V, and that is as it should be.

However in certain realms - safety critical, 2-of-3 voting and so on - having a diversity of platforms is still considered productive, so .. if the foundries ever boot up properly .. there's still lots of life outside the mono-platform. I'm sure RISC-V is a build target for him these days.

This could have been a story about any ISA but it warms my heart to see RISC-V optimizations like this appearing bit by bit every day.

RISC-V chips that are fast enough to get used are appearing now and, when they do, the software ecosystem is going to be ready to meet it.

In the past, the hardware usually came first with the software slow to appear after. This time, it is happening the other way around.

> I’m looking forward to using a RISC-V computer

I may be using this one soon:

https://store.deepcomputing.io/products/dc-roma-risc-v-mainb...

The experiment never ended.

Pretty much every new ISA introduced since the 80’s has been RISC.

PowerPC was adopted by Apple (RISC), they went back to Intel (CISC), and then they went back to RISC (Apple Silicon).

ARM, pretty much all phones, tablets, and Chromebooks is RISC.

Windows runs on ARM now as well (Qualcomm X Elite).

The interest around RISC-V is that anybody can use it in their chips without having to ask permission.

Hyperscalers are using RISC-V servers today. Here is an example from SiFive (USA).

https://www.sifive.com/blog/investing-in-our-next-chapter-of...

And here is an example of Alibaba using RISC-V for inference and training in the cloud:

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/04/08/china-alibaba-data-cente...

Those are both up and running today.

And of course there is Tenstorrrent:

https://tenstorrent.com/ip/risc-v-cpu

> the whole RISC-V thing will remain a tiny niche

I think this is going to embarrassingly wrong.

> all of the SW that is native to the platform

There are several RISC-V Linux distros where essentially all the software available for the x86-64 platform is also available on the RISC-V edition. Let’s use Ubuntu as an example.

> when a vendor loses interest in the platform > the platform goes to rot immediately

Ubuntu will provide updates for 15 years. That does not seem very immediate.

For RVA23 hardware, I expect even new Ubuntu releases to support it up to around 2030 at least. 15 years from then will be 2045. I cannot say that I am picking up what you are laying down here.

Do you have a lot of experience with x86 SBCs?

The RISC-V server spec mandates UEFI, ACPI, and SBI. Here is a RISC-V “desktop” motherboard that has the same:

https://milkv.io/titan

I have touched some PC-98 and FM Towns, which are x86 but not IBM PC compatible.

But I understand your point, ARM has its roots in embedded systems and it shows. I really hope that RISC-V learns from that mistake and focuses on standardization, the board you linked looks very promising.