Discussion on CPU Architectures

Hardware MikroTik hardware general
1

MIPS is basically dead.. the company went in favor of RISC-V ..
Tilera got sold to Mellanox which got sold to nVidia .. TILE got dropped from the linux kernel.

So that leaves PPC, and ARM.

Anyway I just want to know:
How secure is the future sourcing for “trailing-edge” chips for Mikrotik Hardware? I understand existing IP cores and chips will be available for years to come.
Who handles the IP for the deprecated/dropped architectures?
What’s Mikrotik’s take on RISC-V?

I love the fact that MIkrotik Router’s cater to such a wide range of hardware capabilities. But everything goes to a singularity.

2

i think PPC is dead too, at least on MikroTik

i think RISC-V will be a major player but not yet,

Now ARM is a good platform


Future transition to RISC-V, is not a MikroTik sole decision, in fact hardware vendors set the pace on architectures, (qualcomm, marvell etc)

When we have a state of the art Networking SOC with RISC-V we can talk about migrating to it, is not so easy like using an ESP32 with RISC-V Core

3

TILE is essentially a stripped-down ARM core

the compiler was ARM with some disabled instructions (analogous to the realtek cores, that are MIPS in principle, but lacks the “MMX” equivalent instructions)

i feel even containers should work, provided someone compiles one based on the old kernel toolchains

4

PowerPC is certainly soon dead. Some telecoms-vendors still hang on but the next generations will be ARM or embedded x86. ARM is more or less replacing MIPS in SoHo devices.

RISC-V, haven’t seen a single device with it yet, a part for some development-boards.

5

Regarding to the current RISC-V status available on the market:

SoCs/Processors which are trending:

SBCs which are commercially available and community development is ongoing (including Open Source Hardware):

StarFive VisionFive 2:

Sipeed Lichee Pi 4A

Pine64 STAR64 (it’s on the way):

More hardware with RISC-V:

Hope MikroTik embrace RISC-V soon.

6

Just a bunch of Chinese development boards with horrible software support. Where is the actual products?

7

Sorry to bump.

At end of 2025, some manufacturers are already offering hardware based on RISC-V with AI NPU capabilities:

Orange Pi:

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http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-R2S.html

Banana Pi:

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https://www.banana-pi.org/en/bananapi-router/195.html

So why not MikroTik?

8

I guess ... because committing to supporting another CPU platform does cost a lot in terms of man power. And that cost has to be covered by actual revenue (or at least has to be projected to be covered). With extremely low device prices the revenue has to come from vast volumes of sold devices ... which MT might not realize (being more or less a niche vendor). ARM platform in this sense is supported by sales of "top level" devices (CCR2xx, newer CRS) which brind much higher revenue per device sold. But does pay keeping ARM support alive.