HiFive Unmatched: Exploring A RISC-V Computing Experience
Experimenting with SiFive's HiFive Unmatched RISC-V development board over the last few weeks has felt a bit like stepping back in time. The experience left me feeling a bit nostalgic. Picture this. It's 1997. I'm a high school sophomore. I head over to my friend's house after class because a long-awaited CD with something called "Slackware Linux" on it has arrived. It's installed on a 486DX4 100 PC that lives in their poorly-lit, unfinished basement. The day's 30 minutes of free dial-up from the local ISP are used to download "tarballs" with "Kermit." Linux is strange and confusing, but I do like...