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This seems to assume that development of ISAs is done for free, which is not the case. When a firm pays Arm a licensing fee for the Arm ISA that fee helps supp
by klelatti 3y ago
This seems to assume that development of ISAs is done for free, which is not the case.
When a firm pays Arm a licensing fee for the Arm ISA that fee helps support the development of the Arm ISA.
When someone who works for SiFive or Tenstorrent etc works on the development of the RISC-V ISA, they are being paid and those costs will be recovered through the price paid for the products they sell. Others may use the ISA at zero cost but someone is paying.
Now you could argue that costs will be lower in aggregate because of greater competition, but the cost isn't zero in total.
- persnickety 3y agoThis does include a presumption, but not the one that you're proposing: that the ISA development is done for cheaper than when a single profit-driven entity is responsible for it.
- klelatti 3y agoIt might be cheaper but licensing costs = 0 does not imply that, which is what your original statement said.