It looks like so far there are two Linux usable Risc-V cores: those from Alibaba's c910[0], and those from sifive (like this one). There is also OpenXiangShan[1] which is an academic project which has seen real tape out but so far no product that I'm aware of. I believe XiangShan is somewhat based on Berkley's BOOM[2], someone who knows can correct me on this.
My hope is that in the long run it makes sense for cloud companies to fund open source CPU development. They already fund closed source development by paying Intel, AMD, and now ARM (some of which is in house like Graviton). It shouldn't be so expensive throw a few million at this. Google and Amazon already have some in house talent. I don't think these cloud companies really want to be in the business of (closed source) hardware development. At the very least, they can put pressure on the existing CPU companies: what are they going to do - lose out on their largest market? The cloud companies are in control here.
I totally agree. My hope is that they all try their own projects, but eventually all pool their efforts into whichever one becomes the best. If the c910 is already that one then great. There is also a large incentive for Alibaba in the first place as a future with no x86 or ARM is a possible reality for them - Alibaba's hardware could just be a backup plan and they have no plans to use it in production servers. It difficult to tell if this financial decision makes sense for American companies, however. So yes it looks like thing are going in the right direction but only time will tell what happens ultimately.
My hope is that in the long run it makes sense for cloud companies to fund open source CPU development. They already fund closed source development by paying Intel, AMD, and now ARM (some of which is in house like Graviton). It shouldn't be so expensive throw a few million at this. Google and Amazon already have some in house talent. I don't think these cloud companies really want to be in the business of (closed source) hardware development. At the very least, they can put pressure on the existing CPU companies: what are they going to do - lose out on their largest market? The cloud companies are in control here.
[0]https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910 [1]https://github.com/OpenXiangShan/XiangShan [2]https://github.com/riscv-boom