6 ms·

Most SOCs on the market today have a mix of various CPU cores. It's common to see designs with a few big ARM Cortex-A cores running an OS like Linux or Android,

by nrclark 10mo ago

Most SOCs on the market today have a mix of various CPU cores. It's common to see designs with a few big ARM Cortex-A cores running an OS like Linux or Android, and then some smaller Cortex-M microcontroller cores that do housekeeping things like security checks, power management, realtime features, peripheral management, etc. If I were to guess, Qualcomm wants to replace its various Cortex-M cores with RISC-V equivalents. This saves them money on licensing, reduces their dependency on ARM, and doesn't break customer-facing compatibility. Ventana is probably more of an aquihire to get their designer team. "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." -Qualcomm, probably

Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
Could be good if a large firm stabilized the RISC-V version fragmentation with a massive standard SoC product boost in the Android space. But more likely, the early product line will meet the same fate as the dog in "Old Yeller" (1957) in a market consolidation push. =3
- nrclark 10mo ago
  I'd be surprised if Qualcomm replaces their application processors (the cores that typically run Android/Linux or QNX) with RISC-V any time soon. Aarch64's ecosystem is huge, and Qualcomm would cut their customers off from it by moving fully to RISC-V. They're more likely to replace the smaller CPU cores imo.
  - Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
    Agreed, at $5/pc for a ARM64 7/8/9 SoC that can run a real OS, the Aarch64 is likely the minimum now for most designs. =3
  - brucehoult 10mo ago
    > Aarch64's ecosystem is huge ARMv8 hardware (other than Apple) only shipped 3-6 years before RV64GC/RVA20, and ARMv9 is only about two years before the equivalent RVA23 -- at least in SBCs/Laptops. Obviously ARMv8 hardware went into mobile devices a lot earlier, though it was often running 32 bit code for the first few years. It's nothing at all like the maturity lead x86 has over both.
- brucehoult 10mo ago
  What version fragmentation? Pretty much everything coming out in 2026 -- including Ventana's Veyron V2 -- is RVA23. One profile to rule them all. Currently-shipping applications processors are either RVA20 (plus the B extension in practice) or RVA22 with V as a standard option. That's not fragmentation, it's just a standard linear progression. Each thing can run all the software from the previous thing: RVA20 (what e.g. Ubuntu 25.04 and earlier require) -> RVA20 + B -> RVA22 -> RVA22 + V -> RVA23 (what Ubuntu 25.10 and later require)
  - Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
    The exact same mistakes were made in ARM6. RISC-Y biggest competitor is mature architecture ecosystems and variants of itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect Even most ARM software compilers still cripple the advanced vendor specific asic features simply for stability mitigation. ARM 8/9 was actually a much leaner design. Cheers =3 https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
    - brucehoult 10mo ago
      What mistakes? No one is ever going to design an ISA that is complete and finished forever on Day #1. There are always going to be new data types and new algorithms to support e.g. the current rush to add "AI" support to all ISAs (NPUs, TPUs, whatever you want to call them). Arm has ARMv9-A following on from ARMv8-A, and they are already up to Armv9.7-A in addition to as many ARMv8-A enhancements. Intel/AMD have all kinds of add-ons to x86_64, and not even linear e.g. the here now gone now AVX512. Finally here to stay (presumably) in x86-64-v4. And there is already APX and AVX10 to add to that.
      - Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
        If people standardized around something like the RISC-V X280, added some standard license-free hardware codecs, and quietly ejected every other distraction. Than RISC-V may have dropped into mobile SoC markets like amd64 did with x86 hard-to-use failed successor IA-64. Note, the silicon business is about selling sustained volumes of identical product, and not about a CEOs ego selling bespoke chips in sub 100k batches. There were many great chips that never survived in consumer product spaces. When manufacturers tell chip houses there is a permutation compatibility risk issue, and people take a petulant stance on the feedback... “Not my circus, not my monkeys” as they say. 1. Intel is kept alive by the promise of an integrated NVIDIA RTX SoC. 2. AMD understood something important about the software market, and that was easy backward-compatibility wins over _every_ other feature. Even Intel had to learn this the hard way. 3. 93% of the market is change sensitive... anyone that assumes cross-compiling is on the queue for that sector is greatly mistaken. Note, it took ARM over a decade driven by Googles dominance with mobile to gain traction. 4. Most software libraries will only enable advanced chip features if hardware is detected, and most compiled code simply uses the compatibility subset of compiled features (sure its 3 times slower, but it works everywhere.) No one is going to go through every permutation of an ISA with vendor specific features. The NERF'd subset of features in most Aarch64 and amd64 packages should be enough indication software people won't give a bean about unstable vanity silicon features. We shall see how RISC-Y plays out in the market. Old Yeller sure looks nervous. =3
webdevver 10mo ago
bad, bad, bad sign, when a company starts to penny pinch like that. but unfortunately very in-line with the thesis that qualcomm is getting squeezed by a commodifying market where value-add opportunity is shifting outside of the SoC platform.
monocasa 10mo ago
Ventana's cores were 15 instruction wide, massively out of order cores that on paper compete with the application cores in Apple's M series SoCs. They're a totally different gate count niche than a Cortex-M equivalent.
- nrclark 10mo ago
  Fully agree - Ventana's cores are more like Cortex A76 kinds of things, and are on a completely different scale from typical Cortex-M cores. But switching to RISC-V would shut Qualcomm out from QNX and would limit its Android compatibility. And on the Qualcomm chips that I've seen so far, they're really bought in on both QNX and Android. That's why I think this is probably an aquihire more than a desire to ship Ventana's CPU cores.
  - camel-cdr 10mo ago
    > Ventana's cores are more like Cortex A76 kinds of things More like Neoverse-V3: https://www.ventanamicro.com/technology/risc-v-cpu-ip/ https://www.ventanamicro.com/technology/risc-v-cpu-ip/ BTW: "Silicon platforms launching in early 2026." I wonder if this will be delayed due to the acquisition.
    - snvzz 10mo ago
      Doubtful. To have silicon in early 2026 would mean tapeout happened months ago.
  - wbl 10mo ago
    Porting QNX would be very possible.
- drob518 10mo ago
  Yea, this to me signals that Qualcomm is starting to hedge its ARM bets. Given all the kerfuffle around licensing they have had with ARM already, I suspect that they are signaling to ARM that they have options and so ARM's leverage is a lot lower than it might be. That said, there are also huge switching costs to Qualcomm's customers, so this is not a move it takes lightly. In the mean time, I'm sure those Ventana engineers can also help them improve their ARM designs, too.

by nrclark 10mo ago

Joel_Mckay 10mo ago

Could be good if a large firm stabilized the RISC-V version fragmentation with a massive standard SoC product boost in the Android space. But more likely, the early product line will meet the same fate as the dog in "Old Yeller" (1957) in a market consolidation push. =3

nrclark 10mo ago
I'd be surprised if Qualcomm replaces their application processors (the cores that typically run Android/Linux or QNX) with RISC-V any time soon. Aarch64's ecosystem is huge, and Qualcomm would cut their customers off from it by moving fully to RISC-V. They're more likely to replace the smaller CPU cores imo.
- Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
  Agreed, at $5/pc for a ARM64 7/8/9 SoC that can run a real OS, the Aarch64 is likely the minimum now for most designs. =3
- brucehoult 10mo ago
  > Aarch64's ecosystem is huge ARMv8 hardware (other than Apple) only shipped 3-6 years before RV64GC/RVA20, and ARMv9 is only about two years before the equivalent RVA23 -- at least in SBCs/Laptops. Obviously ARMv8 hardware went into mobile devices a lot earlier, though it was often running 32 bit code for the first few years. It's nothing at all like the maturity lead x86 has over both.
brucehoult 10mo ago
What version fragmentation? Pretty much everything coming out in 2026 -- including Ventana's Veyron V2 -- is RVA23. One profile to rule them all. Currently-shipping applications processors are either RVA20 (plus the B extension in practice) or RVA22 with V as a standard option. That's not fragmentation, it's just a standard linear progression. Each thing can run all the software from the previous thing: RVA20 (what e.g. Ubuntu 25.04 and earlier require) -> RVA20 + B -> RVA22 -> RVA22 + V -> RVA23 (what Ubuntu 25.10 and later require)
- Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
  The exact same mistakes were made in ARM6. RISC-Y biggest competitor is mature architecture ecosystems and variants of itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect Even most ARM software compilers still cripple the advanced vendor specific asic features simply for stability mitigation. ARM 8/9 was actually a much leaner design. Cheers =3 https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
  - brucehoult 10mo ago
    What mistakes? No one is ever going to design an ISA that is complete and finished forever on Day #1. There are always going to be new data types and new algorithms to support e.g. the current rush to add "AI" support to all ISAs (NPUs, TPUs, whatever you want to call them). Arm has ARMv9-A following on from ARMv8-A, and they are already up to Armv9.7-A in addition to as many ARMv8-A enhancements. Intel/AMD have all kinds of add-ons to x86_64, and not even linear e.g. the here now gone now AVX512. Finally here to stay (presumably) in x86-64-v4. And there is already APX and AVX10 to add to that.
    - Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
      If people standardized around something like the RISC-V X280, added some standard license-free hardware codecs, and quietly ejected every other distraction. Than RISC-V may have dropped into mobile SoC markets like amd64 did with x86 hard-to-use failed successor IA-64. Note, the silicon business is about selling sustained volumes of identical product, and not about a CEOs ego selling bespoke chips in sub 100k batches. There were many great chips that never survived in consumer product spaces. When manufacturers tell chip houses there is a permutation compatibility risk issue, and people take a petulant stance on the feedback... “Not my circus, not my monkeys” as they say. 1. Intel is kept alive by the promise of an integrated NVIDIA RTX SoC. 2. AMD understood something important about the software market, and that was easy backward-compatibility wins over _every_ other feature. Even Intel had to learn this the hard way. 3. 93% of the market is change sensitive... anyone that assumes cross-compiling is on the queue for that sector is greatly mistaken. Note, it took ARM over a decade driven by Googles dominance with mobile to gain traction. 4. Most software libraries will only enable advanced chip features if hardware is detected, and most compiled code simply uses the compatibility subset of compiled features (sure its 3 times slower, but it works everywhere.) No one is going to go through every permutation of an ISA with vendor specific features. The NERF'd subset of features in most Aarch64 and amd64 packages should be enough indication software people won't give a bean about unstable vanity silicon features. We shall see how RISC-Y plays out in the market. Old Yeller sure looks nervous. =3

webdevver 10mo ago

bad, bad, bad sign, when a company starts to penny pinch like that. but unfortunately very in-line with the thesis that qualcomm is getting squeezed by a commodifying market where value-add opportunity is shifting outside of the SoC platform.

monocasa 10mo ago

Ventana's cores were 15 instruction wide, massively out of order cores that on paper compete with the application cores in Apple's M series SoCs. They're a totally different gate count niche than a Cortex-M equivalent.

nrclark 10mo ago
Fully agree - Ventana's cores are more like Cortex A76 kinds of things, and are on a completely different scale from typical Cortex-M cores. But switching to RISC-V would shut Qualcomm out from QNX and would limit its Android compatibility. And on the Qualcomm chips that I've seen so far, they're really bought in on both QNX and Android. That's why I think this is probably an aquihire more than a desire to ship Ventana's CPU cores.
- camel-cdr 10mo ago
  > Ventana's cores are more like Cortex A76 kinds of things More like Neoverse-V3: https://www.ventanamicro.com/technology/risc-v-cpu-ip/ https://www.ventanamicro.com/technology/risc-v-cpu-ip/ BTW: "Silicon platforms launching in early 2026." I wonder if this will be delayed due to the acquisition.
  - snvzz 10mo ago
    Doubtful. To have silicon in early 2026 would mean tapeout happened months ago.
- wbl 10mo ago
  Porting QNX would be very possible.
drob518 10mo ago
Yea, this to me signals that Qualcomm is starting to hedge its ARM bets. Given all the kerfuffle around licensing they have had with ARM already, I suspect that they are signaling to ARM that they have options and so ARM's leverage is a lot lower than it might be. That said, there are also huge switching costs to Qualcomm's customers, so this is not a move it takes lightly. In the mean time, I'm sure those Ventana engineers can also help them improve their ARM designs, too.