Comment by phire
5 hours ago
The two authors also have a very different definition of what "high-end" means.
Dmitry is talking about high-end application processors that you might find in a mid-range or better laptop, smartphone or server. Armstrong Subero seems to think that anything larger than a "dirt cheap microcontroller" is high-end.
People shouldn't take this the wrong way, but the VexRISC-V cores in Baochip are not "high-end". They are basically as low-end as you can get while still meeting the modern definition of "application core". And that doesn't matter, because being high-end application SoC is not Baochip's design criteria. These cores are actually pretty decent for Baochip's criteria.
The VexRISC-V are implementing the exact style of "classic-RISC" microarchitecture that RISC-V is optimised for. It's basically the optimal niche for RISC-V, before any of the problems start showing up.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone express the opinion that RISC-V can't easily cover the "dirt cheap microcontroller" to "low-end application processor" range, even stretching up into "mid-range application processor". Just that it's really fighting an uphill battle if it ever wants to compete with high-end application processors (and that it's going to struggle in the low-range/mid-range application market because of that).
To add to what you said, I don't see any big issues with high-end prosessors and licenses.
Anyone who spends $200 million to develop a completely new high-end processor microarchitecture every 3 to 5 years is not going to complain about an ARM license too much. You get freedom with $$.
If you got “freedom with $$”, there would have been no ARM/Qualcomm lawsuit.
Softbank and ARM managed to burn a lot of good-will with that bullshit (it is a bad sign when I'm siding with Qualcomm), and all for nothing as they lost that lawsuit. But is generally true that the $$ buys architecture licensees quite a bit of freedom.
Not as much freedom as they would get with something open like RISC-V, as ARM have strict rules around private ISA extensions (like how Apple doesn't publicly document AMX). But that extra control is generally a good thing for the health of the wider ARM ecosystem.