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You can definitely license RISC-V implementations as in actual cores/silicon IP. And you can definitely patent specific hardware implementations of a RISC-V CPU

You can definitely license RISC-V implementations as in actual cores/silicon IP. And you can definitely patent specific hardware implementations of a RISC-V CPU. For example whilst both AMD and Intel produce X86 CPUs and share the license they also have numerous patents for their specific implementations e.g. memory controller, prefetch unit, branch predictor etc. The idea that the RISC-V ecosystem isn’t going to get rather quickly bogged down by patents is too optimistic unless I’ve missed something substantial in their licensing terms that prohibits RISC-V ISA users from issuing patents on their in silicon implementation. Building a CPU today without having to work around patents is already rather hard and eventually there will be only so many actual hardware implementation of the RISC-V ISA that are both efficient in terms of performance and manufacturing. So whilst the ISA might be open the secret sauce of how to actually make something useful out of it isn’t going to be open or free.

tcmart14 4y ago
That last point is the point a lot of people miss. RISC-V is permissively licensed. The example of, "it is free like Ethernet" is not a great example. The best example is, "it is free like FreeBSD/NetBSd/OpenBSD." People can choose to use the open aspects of it. Or people/companies can choose to use that as a base then do whatever they please on top of it. Much like Sony can take FreeBSD, make an operating system for the console and not share any part of it except by giving a mention that they used FreeBSD somewhere in their stack.
ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
The difference is that you need an x86 license to produce a processor that uses the same instruction set. IIRC there are just three companies that are licensed - Intel, AMD and possibly VIA if they're still around. It's not just the implementation that's patented. Whether or not RISC-V implementations become encumbered by patents, at least it is now possible for companies to make their own processors without having to create the entire ecosystem too.

tcmart14 4y ago

That last point is the point a lot of people miss. RISC-V is permissively licensed. The example of, "it is free like Ethernet" is not a great example. The best example is, "it is free like FreeBSD/NetBSd/OpenBSD." People can choose to use the open aspects of it. Or people/companies can choose to use that as a base then do whatever they please on top of it. Much like Sony can take FreeBSD, make an operating system for the console and not share any part of it except by giving a mention that they used FreeBSD somewhere in their stack.

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago

The difference is that you need an x86 license to produce a processor that uses the same instruction set. IIRC there are just three companies that are licensed - Intel, AMD and possibly VIA if they're still around. It's not just the implementation that's patented. Whether or not RISC-V implementations become encumbered by patents, at least it is now possible for companies to make their own processors without having to create the entire ecosystem too.