That is not what that word means. There will be more new ARM CPUs shipped next year than RISC-V CPUs. It is actively developed and improved. And this trend of people calling existing ISAs "legacy" when they're not is really annoying.
Have you heard the phrase "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof"?
You're asking yjftsjthsd-h to furnish data to make a slam dunk conclusion that ARM-licensed CPU designs will out-sell RISC-V.
You realize Apple Silicon is ARM, right? And 99% of all smartphones that have been sold in the last decade, and indeed in 2023, are based on ARM cores?
We are talking hundreds of millions of devices being built and sold each year, just in the phone+PC space. That's ignoring all other verticals where ARM designs can be scaled up/down to meet.
I mean, gosh, even if virtually EVERY company in the world, EXCEPT Apple, chose to drop all ARM IP tomorrow and switch to RISC-V, there'd still be a good chance the statement "There will be more new ARM CPUs shipped next year than RISC-V CPUs." would still hold true in 2025: Apple sell a lot of computers in various sizes, you know :)
> You're asking yjftsjthsd-h to furnish data to make a slam dunk conclusion that ARM-licensed CPU designs will out-sell RISC-V.
I think the statement that was made was slightly different: that there would be more newly shipping ARM parts than RISC-V parts (to show that ARM is still actively developed).
Which seems very likely, but is not quite a sure thing for 2025. (And it depends upon how we count: lots of RISC-V wins inside proprietary SoCs is probably not quite what we mean, but instead new RISC-V COTS parts we can put into our designs; but if you count the former RISC-V probably looks much better).
>> You're asking yjftsjthsd-h to furnish data to make a slam dunk conclusion that ARM-licensed CPU designs will out-sell RISC-V.
> I think the statement that was made was slightly different: that there would be more newly shipping ARM parts than RISC-V parts (to show that ARM is still actively developed).
I actually thought about it at the time and left it ambiguous because I believe both; I believe there are and will be more ARM designs, and I also believe there are and will be more physical ARM chips manufactured.
> I believe there are and will be more ARM designs
Just out of curiosity, what does ARM designs mean here?
- New distinct processor cores available?
- New distinct parts I can buy at DigiKey and through other channels that include an ARM core?
- New distinct chips taped out using an ARM core, including vendor specific chips?
The latter is where I expect RISC-V to surge first. Probably not passing ARM in 2024, but threatening to do so. It's pretty easy to get rid of a license fee at this point unless you need extreme performance or are really picky about tooling.
ARM may not win on the first measure, either, but that's largely the vagaries of how roadmap packs into a calendar year.
There's also the whole question of whether Cortex-M counts as ARM anymore, given that modern large ARMs no longer run the Thumb instruction set (and Cortex-M only runs Thumb).
I was thinking of tape outs when I wrote it, though again I think all those are true in the short term.
I guess we can argue semantics of what counts as "ARM", but Cortex-M sure isn't RISC-V so for the purposes of this conversation I'm inclined to unambiguously include it.
MIPS, Xtensa, and x86 aren't RISC-V, too, should we count them? ;)
It's hard to measure how big RISC-V is for vendor-specific SOC wins. There's clearly a whole lot of momentum. Performance and all of the new things ARM does aren't necessarily too relevant if you're designing a chip that goes inside a hard drive or whatever, but a few pennies a unit to ARM might be.
>You realize Apple Silicon is ARM, right? And 99% of all smartphones that have been sold in the last decade, and indeed in 2023, are based on ARM cores?
Emphasis on "cores". Relative to each one of these application processor cores, how many embedded smaller cores doing specialized tasks do you think there are?
Are you aware RISC-V already has penetration there? Do you know how e.g. the popular Qualcomm SoCs have shipped a bunch of RISC-V cores for a while already?
Are you aware the companies behind popular alternatives to ARM such as Arc or MIPS have already embraced RISC-V?
In short, what makes you think that in 2025, most of these cores will be ARM?
> Emphasis on "cores". Relative to each one of these application processor cores, how many embedded smaller cores doing specialized tasks do you think there are?
Fair point, but the context here is your original comment:
> Great idea, but not a fan of the timing yielding a legacy (ARM) SoC.
So you're talking about the main processing cores of the SoC, the one(s) that are responsible for running the Linux kernel + OpenWRT user space, right?. Not the random other 8/16/32-bit MCUs...
I meant in the next year, but it's probably true of 2025 as well.
My primary basis is continually trying to get a Linux-capable machine with a RISC-V CPU, which remains difficult. Look at the number of SBCs released each year for the last... I dunno, 5-10y? A bit of x86, a lot of ARM, and at the very end a single digit number of RISC-V boards. Which still are slow, expensive, or both. Even if RISC-V ships exponentially more boards each year it won't break even until after 2025. If you wish to offer data to the contrary feel free.
Now, there's a possible argument for number of non-Linux-capable chips, but I don't know how to gauge that; the... Cortex-M0? I think? Is still a popular option AIUI. Likewise, if you have actual evidence feel free to share.
(None of this should be read as dislike for RISC-V; I want to use it, but the market doesn't yet agree, and even when it does take off the competition won't magically become "legacy" at a result.)
Edit: Actually that last bit deserves more emphasis - while I believe what I wrote about numbers, it's secondary to the rest of the comment; RISC-V is great, but it in no way renders everything else "legacy" so long as they remain actively used and developed (the latter is important, but ARM continues to improve so the point stands).
That is not what that word means. There will be more new ARM CPUs shipped next year than RISC-V CPUs. It is actively developed and improved. And this trend of people calling existing ISAs "legacy" when they're not is really annoying.