RVA23 marks a turning point in how mainstream CPUs are expected to scale performance. By making the RISC-V Vector Extension (RVV) mandatory, it elevates structured, explicit parallelism to the same architectural status as scalar execution. Vectors are no longer optional accelerators bolted onto speculation-heavy cores. They are baseline capabilities that software can rely on. RVA23 doesn’t force scalar execution to become deterministic. It simply makes determinism viable because the scalar side ...