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It's only a matter of time before RISC-V takes over the market completely, even high-end stuff. Currently the biggest gains are to be had from small embedded p

It's only a matter of time before RISC-V takes over the market completely, even high-end stuff. Currently the biggest gains are to be had from small embedded processors where the ARM licensing fee makes up a hefty percentage of the total cost. It's here where you see RISC-V making inroads very quickly. BTW this will also eat away at ARM's bottom line because the company is mostly focused on the embedded market.

qwytw 4y ago
> It's only a matter of time before RISC-V takes over the market completely, even high-end stuff. Why? I suppose at some point there were people who were saying the same about Itanium, Power, MIPS and other. Some of them were quite successful in some areas. RISC-V will probably do great as an architecture for 'small embedded processors' sure. How does that mean they will outcompete ARM? It took decades for ARM to be competitive with Intel for server PCs and servers. Why would it be any easier for RISC-V? Sure opensource is cool, but nobody will be giving out designs of high performance RISC-V cores for free... > BTW this will also eat away at ARM's bottom line because the company is mostly focused on the embedded market. Increased competition is great, maybe ARM will have to adjust their business model to compete. Maybe their lose the low-end to RISC-V. But what incentives would Apple or Qualcomm would have to switch to RISC-V? The cost to develop high performance cores would outweigh any licensing costs and I really can't think of any reasons besides that.
- UltraViolence 4y ago
  Because the lack of licensing will foster innovation!! Look at where RISC-V is today. It's already competitive with most ARM products and I'm convinced someone somewhere is already concocting a super-duper RISC-V core that blows the doors off Intel and ARM latest offerings. Qualcomm and Apple will merely want to pump up their profits even higher and ARM is an obstacle, both in licensing costs and terms. With RISC-V they can do whatever they want and they're not beholden to the whims of some other company. Both are already designing their own cores so it really makes no difference to them, except that with RISC-V they can innovate even more.
  - qwytw 4y ago
    > Look at where RISC-V is today. It's already competitive with most ARM products Not at the high end. AFAIK it's still very far. > Qualcomm and Apple will merely want to pump up their profits even higher and ARM is an obstacle, both in licensing costs and terms Well Apple probably can do whatever they want with ARM, so I highly doubt that's a good reason to switch. > Because the lack of licensing will foster innovation!! I mean maybe. TBH I'm not too certain though. It might be the opposite. I find it hard to imagine any competitive high end RISC-V cores will be significantly cheaper to license. Also since it would be very expensive to develop them and there is very little money in licensing tech to others (ARM is not doing that great financially) companies which can build competitive cores might have zero incentive to even make them available to third parties. e.g. why would Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung give away their tech to their competitors? Now at least everyone is on a mostly level playing field and can license same designs for ARM, why would that be the case with ARM?
    - UltraViolence 4y ago
      You would have multiple companies licensing high-end RISC-V cores. And competition will almost always translate into lower prices. It wouldn't surprise me that you could even get a "source code" license for the core and modify it to your needs. AFAIK this isn't possible with ARM (you can either roll your own from scratch or use a off-the-shelf ARM design but not modify it).
      - qwytw 4y ago
        > You would have multiple companies licensing high-end RISC-V cores Perhaps. But why would they license their cores to their competitors instead of just making them themselves. Licensing does not seem like a great business mode in this industry. Has anyone based ARM been successful at it? And even ARM itself is not doing that great financially not even close to Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm etc.

qwytw 4y ago

> It's only a matter of time before RISC-V takes over the market completely, even high-end stuff. Why? I suppose at some point there were people who were saying the same about Itanium, Power, MIPS and other. Some of them were quite successful in some areas. RISC-V will probably do great as an architecture for 'small embedded processors' sure. How does that mean they will outcompete ARM? It took decades for ARM to be competitive with Intel for server PCs and servers. Why would it be any easier for RISC-V? Sure opensource is cool, but nobody will be giving out designs of high performance RISC-V cores for free... > BTW this will also eat away at ARM's bottom line because the company is mostly focused on the embedded market. Increased competition is great, maybe ARM will have to adjust their business model to compete. Maybe their lose the low-end to RISC-V. But what incentives would Apple or Qualcomm would have to switch to RISC-V? The cost to develop high performance cores would outweigh any licensing costs and I really can't think of any reasons besides that.

UltraViolence 4y ago
Because the lack of licensing will foster innovation!! Look at where RISC-V is today. It's already competitive with most ARM products and I'm convinced someone somewhere is already concocting a super-duper RISC-V core that blows the doors off Intel and ARM latest offerings. Qualcomm and Apple will merely want to pump up their profits even higher and ARM is an obstacle, both in licensing costs and terms. With RISC-V they can do whatever they want and they're not beholden to the whims of some other company. Both are already designing their own cores so it really makes no difference to them, except that with RISC-V they can innovate even more.
- qwytw 4y ago
  > Look at where RISC-V is today. It's already competitive with most ARM products Not at the high end. AFAIK it's still very far. > Qualcomm and Apple will merely want to pump up their profits even higher and ARM is an obstacle, both in licensing costs and terms Well Apple probably can do whatever they want with ARM, so I highly doubt that's a good reason to switch. > Because the lack of licensing will foster innovation!! I mean maybe. TBH I'm not too certain though. It might be the opposite. I find it hard to imagine any competitive high end RISC-V cores will be significantly cheaper to license. Also since it would be very expensive to develop them and there is very little money in licensing tech to others (ARM is not doing that great financially) companies which can build competitive cores might have zero incentive to even make them available to third parties. e.g. why would Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung give away their tech to their competitors? Now at least everyone is on a mostly level playing field and can license same designs for ARM, why would that be the case with ARM?
  - UltraViolence 4y ago
    You would have multiple companies licensing high-end RISC-V cores. And competition will almost always translate into lower prices. It wouldn't surprise me that you could even get a "source code" license for the core and modify it to your needs. AFAIK this isn't possible with ARM (you can either roll your own from scratch or use a off-the-shelf ARM design but not modify it).
    - qwytw 4y ago
      > You would have multiple companies licensing high-end RISC-V cores Perhaps. But why would they license their cores to their competitors instead of just making them themselves. Licensing does not seem like a great business mode in this industry. Has anyone based ARM been successful at it? And even ARM itself is not doing that great financially not even close to Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm etc.