> RISC-V needs both economies of scale AND chips that are manufactured at the bleeding edge fabs (smallest dies, etc) which is a lot more expensive. It's a chic

> RISC-V needs both economies of scale AND chips that are manufactured at the bleeding edge fabs (smallest dies, etc) which is a lot more expensive. It's a chicken and egg problem as there's not (yet?) demand Whatever leading-edge fab capacity (mostly TSMC) was available, is now tied up to supply the ongoing AI boom. And will remain so for the foreseeable future. Even if you'd have a RISC-V product for which demand/economics work out, chances are those fabs' order books are filled. Also: design is done in many places, but actual fabrication of RISC-V SoCs in largely centered in China. Which (afaik) doesn't lack IC fabrication capacity. But does lag in leading-edge fab capacity. So: off to older nodes. Which may hurt perf/W, cost effectiveness or transistor budget. Or pay a premium (pricing products out of markets), limited production, or long lead times. Of course this affects ARM based & other products too. But they've been in the optimization / mass fabrication / distribution pipeline much longer than most RISC-V based products. Catching up takes time, and top-tier fab capacity being swiped by Nvidia & co doesn't help to shorten that process. I don't think it's a demand problem. Consumers don't care what powers their phone/tablet/laptop as long as it does its job. So in principle the market is there (yeah.. I understand issues like Google still working on Android-RISC-V, Windows users probably wanting x86 for legacy software etc).