If Qualcomm’s offering is performant (in its dollars, power and speed mix) and Qualcomm keeps it open enough (I think this is at the moment, as they are using an instruction set that anybody can copy), would Qualcomm’s customers care about that? If so, would Qualcomm?
The largest possible concern I see is that customers would have to be convinced that Qualcomm can deliver good compilers that don’t inadvertently spit out instructions not supported by their somewhat off-beat hardware.
Second, the software ecosystem is huge, far more then compiles. And given how everybody today uses open source, making all that available for Qualcomm seems like a losing effort.
Is Qualcomm gone pay to make Android Qualcomm-RISC-V ready. Are they gone provide advanced verification suits. Formal analysis and all that stuff?
Qualcomm absolutely have the market power in the Android space to redefine a new open ISA if they want to though.
Only if Google allows them. Which is unlikely.
Only if they use the op space reserved for custom extensions.
If they don't and instead step all over space that belongs to C, then they would indeed not be RISC-V.
Which is what I understand they're doing. Thus could not be called RISC-V.
Qualcomm must resolve this within RISC-V International somehow. Going its own way would designate those products as non-conformant to RV spec, not passing test suites, not allowed to carry RISC-V logo or claim "RISC-V compatible", etc. With all the software headaches that would result in. Or 3rd party vendors avoiding such Qualcomm products.
So this comes down to "convince majority of RISC-V members Qualcomm's proposal is better". Or failing that, just deal with it.
Whatever happens, chances are slim that backward compatibility with existing implementations & software would be broken @ this point. So creating some kind of alternative profile seems like the most sane option?