That's exactly the problem --- there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to instruction set design.
The trade-offs are mostly very small or non existent once you consider the standard extensions that different use cases will have.
Overall having a unified open instruction set is far better then hand designing many different instruction sets just to get marginal improvement. Some really extreme application might require that, but for the most part the whole indsutry could do just fine with RISC-V. Both on the low and on the high end, and in fact better then most of the alternative all things considered.
If integer checking is really the be all end all and without it RISC-V can not be successful without it, it will be added and it will be pulled into all the profiles. If it is not actually that relevant then it wont. If it is very useful for some verticals and not others, it will be in those profiles and not in others.
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>If integer checking is really the be all end all and without it RISC-V can not be successful without it, it will be added and it will be pulled into all the profiles. If it is not actually that relevant then it wont. If it is very useful for some verticals and not others, it will be in those profiles and not in others.
So which is it? Unified or something else?
Some verticals that will be special like deep embedded will likely be different enough that it will be slightly different, but it still profits from all the work going into the overall ecosystem.
RISC-V allows 'the market' to decide between uniformity and specialty in a orthogonal way. My bet is that this will actually lead to a lot of uniformity in most verticals.
Having a "majority" isn't really different from what we have now, and it includes the downside of a more robust monoculture.
And to be clear here, I'm not anti RISC-V. I am very highly skeptical, given how frequently we see things like code size critics responded to with 'but it will be faster', which isn't really an answer,
The same thing happened here. Hand wavy "the market" and "orthogonal way" doesn't communicate anything meaningful, and or worth some clear downsides at present.
Finally, "the goal" is really "a goal or vision" as expressed by proponents. It's not really one in the objective sense.
