I find my enthusiasm for RISC-V materially reduced by its appalling lack of a base POPCOUNT instruction. Its lack makes my favorite optimizations annoyingly pessimal.<p>I understand that, <i>someday</i>, higher-end realizations will begin to ship with various "B" subsets implemented, but "portable" builds will tend to avoid relying on those for an appallingly long time after. (E.g. MSVC and Gcc still do not generate POPCNT instructions, on amd64, unless you specifically identify a post-2004 target.)<p>I will nonetheless be excited to learn of the first chip that does ship with the full raft of B instructions.