> 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.
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).