As an ex-hardware/embedded engineering student, my dream has always been to build a cool device.

And that usually means you want to build something from scratch as much as possible.

RISC-V has been one of those goals that I used to have. Building your own ISA, building custom chips, and optimizing are things any hardware geek would want to do.

I forgot about that for a while, as my daily work has been busy.

Earlier this year, when VB suggested the EVM be replaced with RISC-V, I ended up thinking this is the right time for me to start revisiting RISC-V and the latest use cases.

So, I will work through what RISC-V is and how I’ll use it as a hobbyist and become a professional if possible.

My end-goal for this project will be making my own crypto-accelerated RISC-V handheld.

But first, let’s use QEMU and Ubuntu to learn what RISC-V is and how to work on it.

FYI, I don’t learn by reading manuals; I just bump around and figure out what’s going on.