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ARM to license devices rather than chips

Ben, thank you for posting the contents of this article for cheapskates like me.

Mr. Blue, does this make RISC-V even more appealing, or will the price increase of ARM still insignificant? Are you responsible for this? Have you been consulting with ARM to lift their prices?
 
Ben, thank you for posting the contents of this article for cheapskates like me.

Mr. Blue, does this make RISC-V even more appealing, or will the price increase of ARM still insignificant? Are you responsible for this? Have you been consulting with ARM to lift their prices?
Arm prices are the highest for embedded cores, but IMO you get more value in design, ecosystem, and industry knowledge than the competition (ARC, MIPS, Xilinx, RISC-V, etc). If I was designing an SoC I'd take a good look at RISC-V, but if I was a start-up I bet Arm would look awfully good to hit the ground running faster.
 
Ares also talk about it. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...o-charge-dramatically-more-for-chip-licenses/

Hacker News on RISC-V from China. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35312960

my two cents:

1. it look like ARM is trying to double dips. I work in IT on the software side. We purchase laptop from Dell or HP which included Win10 Pro licenses then we wipe it and reinstall Win10 Enterprise edition because we have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft. we pay for a Windows license when we buy a laptop from Dell then pay it again with Microsoft agreement 'cause you can get audit by Microsoft if your licensing isn't sufficient and you will pay million+ fines then you have to license from Microsoft after paying fines. if i bought a chip from fabless like Qualcomm...why do i need to pay ARM again? companies will get fed up and look for alternative. in Ars's article, they mentioned Google is "elevate the upstart architecture (RISC-V) to a tier-1 platform". if this happened, ARM is dead. No one want to pay ARM again after buying chip from Qualcomm.

2. Hacker News's thread about RISC-V is interesting. it won't matter if the design is from China as long its open sourced and you can look at the source if you worry about National security. China is betting big on RISC-V and I think tech companies should start investing more into RISC-V instead of ARM.

Softbank's CEO Masayoshi Son bet big on China and lost. If he trying to recoup his loss in China by double dipping. bye-bye ARM.
 
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IMHO - the challenge ARM faced was that Qualcomm and others were taking just a piece of ARM's IP library and adding their own IP modules. This practice dramatically reduced ARM's share of the ultimate revenue while still providing Qualcomm and others with all the benefits of ARM's processor designs. Moving the licensing to a final product is intended to regain ARM's share of the revenues even if the chipmaker eliminated much of ARM's other IP.

I am not so sure it would be double-dipping in revenues, but clearly constricts Qualcomm and others from avoiding payments to ARM that ARM thinks it is due as the core of the solution.
 
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