RISC-V venture in Germany to accelerate design ecosystem
Nearly a month before Arm’s $60 billion-plus IPO, here comes a significant threat to its CPU design and licensing business. Especially when the Cambridge, UK-based processor architecture powerhouse is planning a radical shakeup in its business model while charging several times more for processor IP licenses.
Qualcomm has joined hands with four European semiconductor suppliers—Bosch, Infineon, Nordic Semiconductor, and NXP—to create a venture that will develop compatible RISC-V-based products alongside reference architectures. This unnamed company based in Germany will initially focus on the automotive industry, eventually expanding to mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) designs.
But why this venture aiming to enable next-generation hardware development around RISC-V is worth paying attention to? If there is one word to explain this tie-up, it’s the ecosystem. The creation of design ecosystem is crucial in the commercialization of the RISC-V instruction set architecture.
Arm has everything working in its ecosystem—hardware, OSes, compilers, developer tools, and apps—and that’s where RISC-V must catch up. This new venture is a major step in bolstering RISC-V’s customized hardware with an open-source instruction set. For instance, the new reference designs are expected to increase the adoption of the RISC-V architecture.
Why could this move set alarm bells at Arm? First and foremost, RISC-V’s open-source instruction-set architecture (ISA) starkly contrasts with Arm’s proprietary one. The implications of open vs. closed models are well documented in trade media, but what’s less widely known is the geopolitical aspects of this CPU architecture duel.
While Arm and its CPU offerings have been inevitably thrust into the semiconductor business trade conflicts between China and the United States, RISC-V Foundation first moved to Switzerland in 2019 and then rebranded as RISC-V International to insulate itself from geopolitical trade conflicts. That makes RISC-V a viable alternative for chip developers in China.
More details are expected to emerge about this new venture. For example, how will this company operate, and how much investment will be involved? The fact that this new company has yet to acquire a name shows that it’s a work in progress, and that it needs regulatory approvals in various jurisdictions.
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