European and open hardware initiatives meet old scar tissue

The European RISC-V Industrial Computing Initiative got equal parts enthusiasm ("CPEU is coming! I love RISC-V") and cynicism. One commenter wrote "Yet another 'initiative'" and recalled the European Processor Initiative that "went precisely nowhere." The Optical Circuit Switch paper on low-loss silicon photonics was met with "what's the unique selling point?" because Google's OCS Apollo reportedly reaches similar loss and latency with MEMS at 136x136 and plans to scale beyond 1000x1000. The paper on open-source 5G RAN platforms brought a ten-year RAN veteran into the thread to explain what the comparison leaves out.

The pattern: infrastructure projects get judged against what an incumbent has already shipped, not against the idea. Pan-European and academic efforts carry a credibility discount.

The other side is real appetite. RISC-V is already big in microcontrollers, and people want it on desktops and servers.