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> 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 ha

by 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.

by yosefk 9y ago

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.