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When you have companies like Espressif who do huge volumes using RISC-V, yes. It's definitely a rival. https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-c3 http

by zik 4y ago

When you have companies like Espressif who do huge volumes using RISC-V, yes. It's definitely a rival. https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-c3 https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-c3

kramerger 4y ago
How exactly do you define rival? There are tens maybe hundreds of embedded cpus for every human. While riscv products exist, they are still mostly a novelty. I dont think riscv has even 0.1% of the embedded market yet.
- brucehoult 4y ago
  There was a lot of publicity in October 2021 that ARM had just passed 200 billion cumulative chips with their cores -- over 30 or 35 years. RISC-V International announced passing 10 billion cores back in July. Discounting the distinction between cores and chips, that's RISC-V at around 5% installed base already. That's a lot more than 0.1%. The current run rate will be closer than that. ARM is currently doing about 7 billion chips a quarter. RISC-V is probably around 1 billion -- let's say 15% market share.
  - lttlrck 4y ago
    The whole market isn't ARM + RISC-V is it?
magicalhippo 4y ago
To be fair, Espressif didn't use ARM on their previous ESP designs, but Xtensa[1]. Looking at which chips currenly use ARM vs RISC-V isn't interesting, it's more interesting to look at which new designs are done using ARM vs RISC-V. I assume large players like ST, Microchip and Infineon (Cypress) have bought the ARM licenses and have the infrastructure that allow them to churn out more STM32[2], SAMD[3] and PSoC[4] variations (respectively) for a good while, for example, so there is a fair bit of inertia in this space. That said, browsing that RISC-V member list[5], we do find those same three players as strategic members, so they clearly haven't closed the door on RISC-V... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensilica#Adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensilica#Adoption [2]: https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32-32-bit-arm-cortex-mcus.html https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32... [3]: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-and-microprocessors/32-bit-mcus/sam-32-bit-mcus/sam-d https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-an... [4]: https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/microcontroller/32-bit-psoc-arm-cortex-microcontroller/ https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/microcontroller/32-b... [5]: https://riscv.org/members/ https://riscv.org/members/

by zik 4y ago

kramerger 4y ago

How exactly do you define rival? There are tens maybe hundreds of embedded cpus for every human. While riscv products exist, they are still mostly a novelty. I dont think riscv has even 0.1% of the embedded market yet.

brucehoult 4y ago
There was a lot of publicity in October 2021 that ARM had just passed 200 billion cumulative chips with their cores -- over 30 or 35 years. RISC-V International announced passing 10 billion cores back in July. Discounting the distinction between cores and chips, that's RISC-V at around 5% installed base already. That's a lot more than 0.1%. The current run rate will be closer than that. ARM is currently doing about 7 billion chips a quarter. RISC-V is probably around 1 billion -- let's say 15% market share.
- lttlrck 4y ago
  The whole market isn't ARM + RISC-V is it?

magicalhippo 4y ago

To be fair, Espressif didn't use ARM on their previous ESP designs, but Xtensa[1]. Looking at which chips currenly use ARM vs RISC-V isn't interesting, it's more interesting to look at which new designs are done using ARM vs RISC-V. I assume large players like ST, Microchip and Infineon (Cypress) have bought the ARM licenses and have the infrastructure that allow them to churn out more STM32[2], SAMD[3] and PSoC[4] variations (respectively) for a good while, for example, so there is a fair bit of inertia in this space. That said, browsing that RISC-V member list[5], we do find those same three players as strategic members, so they clearly haven't closed the door on RISC-V... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensilica#Adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensilica#Adoption [2]: https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32-32-bit-arm-cortex-mcus.html https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32... [3]: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-and-microprocessors/32-bit-mcus/sam-32-bit-mcus/sam-d https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-an... [4]: https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/microcontroller/32-bit-psoc-arm-cortex-microcontroller/ https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/microcontroller/32-b... [5]: https://riscv.org/members/ https://riscv.org/members/