[brucehoult]

> Finally the chips have to deliver in performance, to actually provide good mobile devices

There were still, as recently as 2025, new smartphones being released with only Arm A53 cores from 2012. Low end, obviously, but equally obviously there is a market for them.

RISC-V SoCs passed that performance mark in 2021 and shipping SBCs are currently at the Arm A76 RK3588/Pi 5 level. In flagship phones that was the Samsung Galaxy S10 generation, but there are still today a lot of budget phones using A76 as the primary cores (usually with some A55s too).

Cores are available for licensing up to around the Cortex-X3 level. Someone just has to be interested enough to put them in an SoC.

It's a business question now, not a technology one.