RISC-V, as an open-source architecture, poses a significant challenge to Arm, allowing companies to create custom CPUs
- Qualcomm and Google are collaborating to develop the first mass-market RISC-V Android SoC, tentatively named “RISC-V Snapdragon Wear,” aiming to bring RISC-V into the Android ecosystem for wearables.
- This development follows Google’s support for RISC-V in Android and the company’s plans to make it a “tier 1 platform” alongside Arm in Android.
- RISC-V, as an open-source architecture, poses a significant challenge to Arm, allowing companies to create custom CPUs without licensing fees, offering greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.
- This marks a step in countering the dominance of Arm in mobile devices, and it is an important move in the ongoing evolution of RISC-V within the tech industry.
- Qualcomm’s history with RISC-V includes using it in microcontrollers within Arm-based SoCs, with over 650 million RISC-V cores shipped, although not as major system CPUs. The transition to a full RISC-V system CPU for Android will require extensive software support and developer adaptation.
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