Technology shifts are always hard to predict. I don't really have a perspective on whether or not RISC-V will dominate the server market in 10 years ( i think w

Technology shifts are always hard to predict. I don't really have a perspective on whether or not RISC-V will dominate the server market in 10 years ( i think we simply do not have enough info to say one way or the other) However, the author is taking a very techno-centric line of argumentation. I think the success of RISC-V will mainly decided on a combination of economical and cultural factors. RISC-V wasn't really created to address a fundamental technical limitation of the current ISA lanscape (power,arm,x86,mips etc...) and it's debatable how much of an impact an ISA has on top-line metrics (Jym kellers said so i think). IMO RISC-V came to be because of the frustration around the lack of innovation and progress around ISA/uArch/CPU design. The author set out to create a common platform to foster innovation and collaboration. It's mainly a play on better license and modularity which would enable a wider range of innovative design, better collaboration between the research world and the industry. The closest analogy i can think of is the way LLVM gained market share on gcc on the last 10 years. LLVM/Clang didnt need to be "better" C++/C compiler than GCC to be viable. It was a combination of friendlier code base, a focus on user experience (mainly error message, compilation speed etc...) and a licensing that friendlier to companies which foster massive investment from some of the biggest players. In parallel, the modular nature of LLVM made it the de-facto research platform, so most of the innovation happened there. I think something similar will be the deciding factor for RISC-V success in the server landscape : - Do we have enough big, deep pocketed player for whom ARM/X86 is a sufficient pain in the rear to warrant large investments - Will the research community come up with enough innovative design to make the transition interesting. I can't really comment on the research side. But i think if RISC-V succeed on the server side, it will start will some private design from the hyper-scaler to run large in-house software (google search etc...) The dynamic from the hyper-scaler perspective is definitely changing and interesting : - The hyper-scaler have a lot of in-house software and services where they have much more control on which software runs. Sure they all use OSS software, but the contact surface is much lower there. Making the transitions pain easier to handle. - The economy of producing/designing a chip is very different from a chip manufacturer vs an hyper-scaler. PS : powerISA is also open, but doesn't seem to gain any traction.... IBM... always to early at the party