HiFive seems to have no interest in producing SoC’s that can be used by free software. I haven’t seen anything out of China that looks usable in the next couple years (but that situation may change quickly as @nicole.faerber points out).
The best hope that we have for a usable RISC-V processor in the next couple years is the Chassis SoC on the i.MX platform being created by NXP. You can read my assessment here:
Currently the POWER9 chips are too expensive for the desktop PC market, and they suck way too much power to be used in laptops. For years, I have heard that IBM would offer cheaper POWER chips for the desktop PC market, but it has never happened and I doubt it ever will. IBM has walked away from the PC market several times because it doesn’t have good margins.
The best hope for a truly free PC in the near future in my opinion is to build a 2-in-1 tablet/laptop based on the RK3399 (or maybe the i.MX 8M Quad or Plus), which is underpowered, but available today. The RK3399 can now be booted using only free software. The future RK3588 also looks very promising, but it remains to be seen whether it can be booted with free software and whether the Lima drivers can be extended to support its new “Natt” GPU.
See this thread:
https://forums.puri.sm/t/freedom-computer-manufactures/10151