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Any price advantage, even if we assumed a fully mature ecosystem with equivalent processors and systems available, is massively overstated. ARM had a total reve

by Veserv 1y ago

Any price advantage, even if we assumed a fully mature ecosystem with equivalent processors and systems available, is massively overstated. ARM had a total revenue of just ~3.7 G$ in 2024 over ~29 billion chips [1]. In contrast, Qualcomm, just one of many large suppliers of ARM-based systems, had a total revenue of ~39 G$ and a operating income of ~10 G$. ARM's entire revenue would easily fit into Qualcomm's profit and only increase costs by ~12%. And that is just one supplier. You have Samsung, Apple, Broadcom, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, TI, NXP, etc. to help round that out. The total impact of ARM licensing and IP costs is almost certainly less than 1%. And given that RISC-V does not currently have a fully mature ecosystem, you get to trade that for a 1% cost improvement; not really a winning strategy right now. It is likely the main advantage in the long run for RISC-V is that not requiring a license might enable a more vibrant ecosystem due to removing the licensing barrier which might enable better designs at comparable costs (because, again, the cost differential should only be on the order of 1% in the long run) rather than just creating comparable designs that just chip off the licensing cost. That or RISC-V could win because the giant manufacturers feel like putting the squeeze on ARM to drive 1% off their BoM. [1] https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/how-arm-became-the-worlds-default-chip-architecture-with-arm-ceo-rene-haas#:~:text=One%20stat%20that%20I%20pulled,in%20the%20last%2012%20months. https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/how-arm-became-the-worlds-d...

gary_0 1y ago
Using 2024 numbers for ARM might not give a clear picture, because that was many years after major companies like nVidia and WD already switched all their major internal chips to RISC-V. ARM's lunch was already partly eaten; many billions of RISC-V chips were already in the wild in 2024. And companies like Tenstorrent have been building high-performance stuff on RISC-V for a while. If Jim Keller thinks RISC-V is worth it, the advantage must be worth more than 1%.
- Veserv 1y ago
  That speculation is trivially incorrect. ARM had a revenue of 3.2 G$ in 2023, 2.7 G$ in 2022, 2 G$ in 2021.
  - brucehoult 1y ago
    Based on your numbers, revenue increased by 35% between 2021 and 2022, but only 18.5% between 2022 and 2023. Oh! In fact it seems your figures are incorrect -- 2023 was $2.68B, a 1% decrease from 2022, and it was 2024 that was $3.2B. So assuming 2023 was an anomaly (but why?) that's only a average 9% annual increase from 2022 to 2024. Looks like a flattening trend. 2025 will be interesting, especially if it's flat again. As you quite correctly point out, RISC-V's advantage isn't licensing cost -- if you license a core from SiFive or Andes or others then it might cost a bit less than Arm but it's not significant. And if you develop your own core then you'll spend more. The RISC-V advantage is that you can customise it how you want without protracted licensing negotiations with Arm and a very real possibility that they might sue you if you try to do anything innovative. You can add instructions, implement a subset of the instructions, sell chips or completed products to anyone in any market, license your design to other people for them to build, get acquired by other people who can then use what you designed. None of which you can do with Arm.

by Veserv 1y ago

gary_0 1y ago

Using 2024 numbers for ARM might not give a clear picture, because that was many years after major companies like nVidia and WD already switched all their major internal chips to RISC-V. ARM's lunch was already partly eaten; many billions of RISC-V chips were already in the wild in 2024. And companies like Tenstorrent have been building high-performance stuff on RISC-V for a while. If Jim Keller thinks RISC-V is worth it, the advantage must be worth more than 1%.

Veserv 1y ago
That speculation is trivially incorrect. ARM had a revenue of 3.2 G$ in 2023, 2.7 G$ in 2022, 2 G$ in 2021.
- brucehoult 1y ago
  Based on your numbers, revenue increased by 35% between 2021 and 2022, but only 18.5% between 2022 and 2023. Oh! In fact it seems your figures are incorrect -- 2023 was $2.68B, a 1% decrease from 2022, and it was 2024 that was $3.2B. So assuming 2023 was an anomaly (but why?) that's only a average 9% annual increase from 2022 to 2024. Looks like a flattening trend. 2025 will be interesting, especially if it's flat again. As you quite correctly point out, RISC-V's advantage isn't licensing cost -- if you license a core from SiFive or Andes or others then it might cost a bit less than Arm but it's not significant. And if you develop your own core then you'll spend more. The RISC-V advantage is that you can customise it how you want without protracted licensing negotiations with Arm and a very real possibility that they might sue you if you try to do anything innovative. You can add instructions, implement a subset of the instructions, sell chips or completed products to anyone in any market, license your design to other people for them to build, get acquired by other people who can then use what you designed. None of which you can do with Arm.