The ARM company is not just about the instruction set architecture. The ISA wouldn't be interesting at all if no good processors were built with the ISA [0]. For RISC-V to succeed, it requires a company that builds some good processor designs for it - for smartwatches, smartphones, tablets, laptops desktops - and licenses that to others. That company (one or multiple) does not (yet) exist, and is not easy to build.

[0]: Which is exactly why SPARC, and with one exception Power is dying, and why RISC V is yet to deliver. Nobody (bar IBM's POWER line) is building good processors with those ISAs that make it worth the effort to use. Nothing to do with the ISA - you just need chips people are interested in using.

Yep. It's difficult to build a community-- you need to have enough mass to get further interest in. From a business view you end up with the question of "Why bother with RISC-V when ARM is doing what we need and has enough critical mass to keep things going forward?"

About the only thing that could force that to change would be another company buying up ARM and changing the licensing mechanisms (e.g. pricing or even removing some license options) going forward.. or just wrecking the product utterly.

I do think RISC-V has an opportunity here, but only if ARM sells out to NV and NV screws this up as hard as they're likely to in that situation.

> For RISC-V to succeed, it requires a company that builds some good processor designs for it - for smartwatches, smartphones, tablets, laptops desktops - and licenses that to others

The way I see it is that this may actually generate incentive for someone to do that. One of the reasons that that isn't happening yet is because there's no real need with ARM vendors supplying and no real chance with ARM vendors as competition. This could, in theory, clear the way.

This is assuming it would have to be a new company, rather than an existing company like Qualcomm or AMD which could produce a processor with a different ISA if nVidia/ARM became unreasonable to deal with.

This is particularly true for Android because basically the entire thing is written in portable languages and the apps even run on a bytecode VM already, so switching to another architecture or even supporting multiple architectures at the same time wouldn't be that hard.

> This is particularly true for Android because basically the entire thing is written in portable languages and the apps even run on a bytecode VM already, so switching to another architecture or even supporting multiple architectures at the same time wouldn't be that hard.

Google could easily afford to design their own RISC-V CPUs and port Android to it, if they thought it was in their strategic interests to do so.

I think it really depends on how nVidia-owned Arm behaves. If it behaves the same as Softbank-owned Arm, I don't think Google would bother. If it starts to behave differently, in a way which upsets the Android ecosystem, Google might do something like this. (I imagine they'll give it some time to see whether Arm's behaviour changes post-acquisition.)

Given the geopolitical/geoeconomic struggle between the US and China i wouldn't be surprised if China will pivot into RISC-V arch.

And given that Nvidia is a US company, that makes them quiet toxic for a Chinese company to source from.

China is pushing hard both on alternative ISAs like RISC-V and for control of ARM IP.

https://www.techradar.com/news/arm-sacks-china-boss-over-sec...

I’m not saying your claim is wrong but it’s not clear to me how that article backs the claim that China is pushing hard on RISC-V. It seems more like the old CEO of Arm China was doing no good very bad things, most likely for his own benefit.

“Arm revealed that an investigation had uncovered undisclosed conflicts of interest as well as violations of employee rules.”

That was intended to support the second part of my comment (although I can definitely see how that wasn’t clear - sorry about that). A lot of Chinese companies have come out with new RISC-V designs and it’s clear they’re prioritizing making it a possible alternative platform in the case that Arm can no longer be used. The RISC-V foundation also decided to move from the US to Switzerland to avoid the exact sorts of restrictions that have been placed on Arm.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-semiconductors-...

>Arm China CEO Allen Wu has refused to step down after being dismissed by Arm's board

The story you posted is incredible. Does this happen anywhere else in the world?

This can happen anywhere in the world. In order to remove a CEO, you have to follow the proper process. Allen Wu claims that the process wasn't followed and, therefore, his dismissal was illegal and void in effect.

It's not like he was dismissed and he just didn't leave his office. He's challenging the legality of his dismissal.

Ah, but what will it do for the RISC-adverse?

a•verse /əˈvɜrs/ (adj.): Having a strong feeling of opposition to; unwilling: Not averse to spending the night here.

a•verse (ə vûrs′), (adj.): Having a strong feeling of opposition, antipathy, repugnance, etc.; opposed: He is not averse to having a drink now and then.

source: https://www.wordreference.com/definition/averse

Fine, I mistyped. I don't precisely need or desire additional spelling classes from a mysterious online person.

No, I'm sorry, I didn't get your pun and thought you were alluding to the spelling in GP's post.

I didn't mean to bother you, I've been pedantic, thanks for pointing it out.

I apologize. I've been grumpy about neurological issues causing me to have more trouble typing than usual the last few weeks since a lower back injury. My response was over the top and didn't need to be so short-tempered, so again I apologize.

Well, besides ARM, there is also MIPS core or ISA that IC makes can also buy a license and embed into their products in the same fashion as ARM.

They can also design their own ISA. An ISA is a document, they can write their own. Now, can you think of reasons why they wouldn't want to do it that don't also apply to MIPS?

I was thinking the same thing. Nvidia could start charging obscene fees for ARM licenses, but then RISC-V is poised to receive more investment and become increasingly mainstream. Not such a bad thing. We can switch architectures. The toolchain is maturing. Imagine if more companies started making high-performance RISC-V chips?

I was going to say MIPS but yeah.