> It doesn't matter to the end user if the end product (Phones, Tablets, TVs, routers, Home automation gadgets, etc) has ARM or RISC-V. Yes but it's not about

> It doesn't matter to the end user if the end product (Phones, Tablets, TVs, routers, Home automation gadgets, etc) has ARM or RISC-V. Yes but it's not about the end users and it matters for the producers. I mean if your core designs are 'open' and anyone can make just as good chips as you what are you competing on? It means you have no margins since you're selling a commodity, which means there is no incentive into investing anything into R&D (unless it allows you to cut production costs). > In this space (that ARM is dominant in), the ISA isn't the end-product; the device is. So all new chips will have to be designed in-house by the companies which make these devices (effectively eliminating 'middle-men' like Qualcomm, Intel, AMD etc.) so nobody is really competing on CPUs, since core design can no longer be part of your core business (the same way everyone is using Linux, Android, Blink/Chromium)? Wouldn't that lead to stagnation? I don't really see this happening with hardware, though. Especially not high-end chips as long as you can gain a significant advantage by keeping your designs proprietary and all 'open' cores are not protected by something equivalent to GPL (which realistically would be very hard to enforce)