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> It tries to undercut the ARM model of establishing how CPUs or other cores should work and how they should be valued.” Companies are not going for ARM just t

> It tries to undercut the ARM model of establishing how CPUs or other cores should work and how they should be valued.” Companies are not going for ARM just to license professor ISA's. They also license and value the underlying efficient and high performance architecture ARM has developed. What can happen with RISC-V is that there are several competing IP companies that develop competing RISC-V architectures and ask royalties and license fees for their IP. This competition can bring down the cost somewhat. If ARM royalty is 1.5% today, the cost may be 0.77% in the future. It's also possible that one company will dominate others with superior design, price and foundry connections. That company might be ARM, AMD or Intel.

cwyers 9y ago
Why would ARM, AMD or Intel even bother with the RISC-V ISA, though?
- Nokinside 9y ago
  If there is market and enough demand, they will enter it and try to dominate it. Intel is already manufacturing ARM ships. Why would Intel leave the markets to Samsung and TSMC.
  - mtgx 9y ago
    > If there is market and enough demand, they will enter it and try to dominate it. Intel tried that once (Xscale) and failed miserably. The second time it didn't even bother to go with ARM again. Chances are much lower that it would ever bother with RISC-V. Intel's CFO would probably be embarrassed to even bring up a report to the CEO showing how much (little) money they could make from licensing or even manufacturing RISC-V chips ("But sir, we could make hundreds of dollars!") > Intel is already manufacturing ARM ships. Why would Intel leave the markets to Samsung and TSMC. I'm not so sure this will work very well for Intel either. Intel is only willing to do this in markets it doesn't compete. So it agreed to do it in the mobile market, for example, because it doesn't plan on ever going back with its own chips there again. Since Intel is trying to enter the IoT and automotive markets with Atom or Core chips right now, I doubt it would be making ARM or RISC-V chips anytime soon.
    - Nokinside 9y ago
      >I doubt it would be making ARM o Intel wants to produce 64-bit ARM cores for smartphones. It's customers include Apple and Qualcomm. It's not a small market.
yosefk 9y ago
> Companies are not going for ARM just to license professor ISA's. They also license and value the underlying efficient and high performance architecture ARM has developed. Depends on the company. Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, AMD and Nvidia in fact do go to ARM just to license the ISA and implement the CPU entirely on their own. However, the ARM implementations are licensed by a whole lot of smaller companies. The bigger players are thus pretty much forced to forever chase ARM's changes to the ISA and implement these. I doubt they mind ARM's price but I suspect that they might be concerned about ARM's influence. One big change from RISC-V, if it materializes, would be a standard ISA not controlled by a single company like ARM, and not evolving through a knife fight between a few companies racing to extend it, like x86. Will it materialize? Not sure which way I'd bet.
- Nokinside 9y ago
  >and not evolving through a knife fight between a few companies racing to extend it, like x86. Apple others you mention have an architecture license agreement with ARM. It means that they can develop their own cores but they must have full compliance with the ARM architecture. Does RISC-V require fully compliance? If not, RISC-V might be evolving through a knife fight between a few companies racing to extend it just like x86. When one company gets large market share, their extensions become de facto standards.
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    Probably no compliance requirement given all the derivatives. SPARC is another open ISA where you might have to comply if saying it's SPARC-compatible along with a sub-$100 fee. I don't think there's a requirement if you give it a different name or say SPARC-like.
- tyingq 9y ago
  >Not sure which way I'd bet It does look like it has 3 potential entry points. There is already a microcontroller product from hiFive. lowRISC appears to be targeting the smallish SOC market. Then whoever might target more general purpose processors.

cwyers 9y ago

Why would ARM, AMD or Intel even bother with the RISC-V ISA, though?

Nokinside 9y ago
If there is market and enough demand, they will enter it and try to dominate it. Intel is already manufacturing ARM ships. Why would Intel leave the markets to Samsung and TSMC.
- mtgx 9y ago
  > If there is market and enough demand, they will enter it and try to dominate it. Intel tried that once (Xscale) and failed miserably. The second time it didn't even bother to go with ARM again. Chances are much lower that it would ever bother with RISC-V. Intel's CFO would probably be embarrassed to even bring up a report to the CEO showing how much (little) money they could make from licensing or even manufacturing RISC-V chips ("But sir, we could make hundreds of dollars!") > Intel is already manufacturing ARM ships. Why would Intel leave the markets to Samsung and TSMC. I'm not so sure this will work very well for Intel either. Intel is only willing to do this in markets it doesn't compete. So it agreed to do it in the mobile market, for example, because it doesn't plan on ever going back with its own chips there again. Since Intel is trying to enter the IoT and automotive markets with Atom or Core chips right now, I doubt it would be making ARM or RISC-V chips anytime soon.
  - Nokinside 9y ago
    >I doubt it would be making ARM o Intel wants to produce 64-bit ARM cores for smartphones. It's customers include Apple and Qualcomm. It's not a small market.

yosefk 9y ago

> Companies are not going for ARM just to license professor ISA's. They also license and value the underlying efficient and high performance architecture ARM has developed. Depends on the company. Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, AMD and Nvidia in fact do go to ARM just to license the ISA and implement the CPU entirely on their own. However, the ARM implementations are licensed by a whole lot of smaller companies. The bigger players are thus pretty much forced to forever chase ARM's changes to the ISA and implement these. I doubt they mind ARM's price but I suspect that they might be concerned about ARM's influence. One big change from RISC-V, if it materializes, would be a standard ISA not controlled by a single company like ARM, and not evolving through a knife fight between a few companies racing to extend it, like x86. Will it materialize? Not sure which way I'd bet.

Nokinside 9y ago
>and not evolving through a knife fight between a few companies racing to extend it, like x86. Apple others you mention have an architecture license agreement with ARM. It means that they can develop their own cores but they must have full compliance with the ARM architecture. Does RISC-V require fully compliance? If not, RISC-V might be evolving through a knife fight between a few companies racing to extend it just like x86. When one company gets large market share, their extensions become de facto standards.
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  Probably no compliance requirement given all the derivatives. SPARC is another open ISA where you might have to comply if saying it's SPARC-compatible along with a sub-$100 fee. I don't think there's a requirement if you give it a different name or say SPARC-like.
tyingq 9y ago
>Not sure which way I'd bet It does look like it has 3 potential entry points. There is already a microcontroller product from hiFive. lowRISC appears to be targeting the smallish SOC market. Then whoever might target more general purpose processors.