[PaulRobinson]

Headline could read: "RISC-V adoption is 'inevitable' according to RISC-V advocate at RISC-V conference to people who are invested in RISC-V who had come to hear about state of RISC-V adoption".

I'm curious where the data is to support the argument.

I am struggling to see the adoption appetite outside of niche applications where licensing costs of existing architectures are a key barrier.

[ACCount37]

Currently, RISC-V actively shows up in embedded - especially "deep embedded" like specialized ASICs with embedded MCU cores.

It's often seen displacing things like 8051, ARM Cortex-M0, ARC/ARCompact, Xtensa and oddball fully custom cores.

It also starts to show up in low end Linux SoCs - often, again, purpose-specific ones, like SoCs for IP cameras or other single purpose consumer electronics like robot vacuums and drones.

None of those are sexy "high end" applications, like laptops or smartphones, but the adoption is real.

[nbf_1995]

I can only hope RISC-V's displacement of ARM at the low end will force them into competing more at the high end in servers / high end consumer hardware.

[rzerowan]

I believe in microcontrollers its already pretty ubiquitous , see their utilisation by WesternDigital with their SwerV core thats already shipping since 2019. At speeds and complexity comparable to desktop/server cores from Intel/AMD they are still lagging in perf though improving as more cores get deployed. Also to add into the mix the whole geopolitics with non-US players hedging. So potential is there will just depend on what will be the base case like Windows was for Intel.

[invokestatic]

Firmware & systems dev here, ARM still dominates in the microcontroller space. There are some niche offerings from major vendors but again they are niche. Espressif is the sole exception with their newer ESP32-C series chips, but they can get away with it due to their massive HAL. ARM Cortex is still the standard because there’s a decade or two of inertia behind it.

An apt comparison would be C vs Rust. Yes, Rust may be growing in market share, but C still dominates.

[tredre3]

I'm a fellow embedded dev and I agree, arm is still ubiquitous in all applications I've worked on in the past 10 years. I've used the rp2350 in a commercial application recently and whether or not we'd ignore the risc-v cores wasn't even a question. As a hobbyist however I'm glad that they're there!

Just a nit-pick: risc-v isn't limited to the ESP32-C line. All of their chips are risc-v except the OG/S/S2/S3. A few years ago they've stated that the S3 would be the last xtensa chip and they seem to have held to that, the -E, -H, and -P lines released since are all risc-v.

[mort96]

It's not just Espressif's ESP32-C series, it's all their new offerings. The low-end ESP32-C2, C3, C5, C6 and C61, the high-end ESP32-P4, the base ESP32 replacement "all-rounder" ESP32-S21, the ESP32-H2. The last Xtensa-based MCU they released was the S3, 6 years ago.

[hmry]

Non-US hedging will be big for RISC-V in the future, but the geopolitics can also cut the other way. E.g. US banning US companies from using Chinese RISC-V chips, to protect their domestic players. Especially now that intel is partially state-owned.

[dismalaf]

Qualcomm, AMD and Nvidia are heavily investing in RISC-V, Intel's foundry produces RISC-V chips and the US government investment is largely because Intel has a SOTA foundry. Not just x86.

[LastTrain]

There is a limit to how much of that the US can do without causing self inflicted damage.

[dismalaf]

Nvidia has shipped over 3 billion RISC-V cores: https://riscv.org/blog/how-nvidia-shipped-one-billion-risc-v...

Tenstorrent is shipping RISC-V chips made on Samsung 3nm node: https://tenstorrent.com/newsroom/tenstorrent-sets-new-perfor...

Note that Jim Keller (heavyweight in the world of CPU architecture) is their CEO.

Qualcomm recently acquired a RISC-V startup. https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2025/12/qualcomm-acqu...

Plus they're eating ARM for low-end devices (IoT).

RISC-V is going to become the Linux of chips, for the same reasons Linux became big. It might honestly come even faster as Microsoft isn't tethered to any chipmaker these days.

[phendrenad2]

"Inevitable" is in keeping with the brash, larger-than-life marketing angle the whole RISC-V space has adopted. Everything is superlative-themed. "World's first", "world's best", "highest performance", "unmatched", "unleashed", "industry-leading", "gold standard", "world leader", "disruption", "revolution". I don't think it's something that should be taken literally.

[bee_rider]

IMO “State of the union keynote argues” makes it pretty clear that this is a perspective from the person giving the keynote. The article title isn’t reporting it as a matter of fact, but as an argument.

[QuiEgo]

Google is pushing it in embedded (OpenTitan/Ibex).