[smoldesu]

I'm not talking about Qualcomm, really. I'm talking about companies like Apple, who really only have a cursory attachment to ARM as an ISA. Then there's the hundreds of smaller manufacturers who have zero attachment to ARM and would much rather build hardware on their own terms. Those are ARM's moneymakers, and those are the companies that frankly have the most to gain from using RISC-V.

If Qualcomm is a relevant topic regarding ARM's success, then they've arguably already failed.

[error503]

Does Apple pay anything meaningful to ARM? They're a founding member with (I believe still) a significant stake. I find it doubtful they didn't secure themselves a perpetual license when they founded the company, and that seems to be what the Internet believes to be true.

I'm not so sure it's the expensive large chips, made in relatively small quantities, that make ARM the most money, do you have a source? I'd have guessed they actually make more on the billions of small ARM cores that ship every year that end up by multiples in pretty much every device with a battery or power cord. And these, I think, are at the biggest risk of leaving ARM. RISC-V development is mature enough at this end of the market that it's relatively easy for users to transition, there are multiple competitive cores on the market, and there's no concern here about backwards compatibility because these are embedded systems where there's usually not an expectation of having to run user code at all. It will be much harder for the likes of Qualcomm where there's a huge ecosystem built around their ARM processors - but as a share of cost-per-processor, they probably stand to gain the most. Qualcomm is a founding member of the RISC-V foundation after all.

[qwytw]

> They're a founding member with (I believe still) a significant stake

No, ARM is 100% owned by SoftBank. Apple sold their shares a while ago.

Overall ARM doesen't really make that much money, especially compared to some of their clients. It's not even obvious to me if would make sense financially even for Qualcomm to design their own RISC-V cores compared to licensing from ARM.

I mean they could and did design their own cores but they are still using ARM designed ones for their top-end chips.

[klelatti]

> would much rather build hardware on their own terms

Most of these firms are licensing a core from a third party. There is no such thing as ‘on their own terms’.

[smoldesu]

Not Apple or many of the smaller manufacturers. Even still, the ones who do want to license core designs still have the option to do so with RISC-V.

[qwytw]

> smaller manufacturers who have zero attachment to ARM and would much rather build hardware on their own terms

Or they believe that designing their own cores would be cost prohibitive and prefer licensing them from ARM.

It's also not obvious to me than licensing conditions for RISC-V could be more favorable than what ARM is offering. Why would you anyone even license competitive cores their competitors if they can make more money selling them themselves?

[klelatti]

Completely agree with this and with your other comments in this thread.

There simply isn't that much money in designing cores. The money is in selling SoCs or devices. Arm at least has made increasingly high quality cores available at reasonable prices to all comers. A future where Arm's business is made unviable is not necessarily better for consumers.

You can license RISC-V cores from Si-Five today but they if reports are correct they were in discussions to sell to Intel. If that were to happen who knows what would happen to their offering. There will be others of course but as you say it's not obvious that what they offer will be any better that what Arm offers today.

And for the foreseeable future Arm is immune to takeover by any of its deep-pocketed customers.

I'm very happy that RISC-V exists from a number of perspectives but there needs to be a realistic assessment of its potential impact.

[GoOnThenDoTell]

The Intel sale didn’t go through

[klelatti]

You’re right but the point is that Intel was very interested. If you’re relying on cores from firms that are attractive to SoC / device makers then there is no guarantee those cores will continue to be available post acquisition.