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kramerger

Is riscv really a rival in the embedded space?

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When you have companies like Espressif who do huge volumes using RISC-V, yes. It's definitely a rival.

https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-c3

How exactly do you define rival?

There are tens maybe hundreds of embedded cpus for every human. While riscv products exist, they are still mostly a novelty. I dont think riscv has even 0.1% of the embedded market yet.

There was a lot of publicity in October 2021 that ARM had just passed 200 billion cumulative chips with their cores -- over 30 or 35 years. RISC-V International announced passing 10 billion cores back in July. Discounting the distinction between cores and chips, that's RISC-V at around 5% installed base already.

That's a lot more than 0.1%.

The current run rate will be closer than that. ARM is currently doing about 7 billion chips a quarter. RISC-V is probably around 1 billion -- let's say 15% market share.

The whole market isn't ARM + RISC-V is it?

To be fair, Espressif didn't use ARM on their previous ESP designs, but Xtensa[1].

Looking at which chips currenly use ARM vs RISC-V isn't interesting, it's more interesting to look at which new designs are done using ARM vs RISC-V.

I assume large players like ST, Microchip and Infineon (Cypress) have bought the ARM licenses and have the infrastructure that allow them to churn out more STM32[2], SAMD[3] and PSoC[4] variations (respectively) for a good while, for example, so there is a fair bit of inertia in this space.

That said, browsing that RISC-V member list[5], we do find those same three players as strategic members, so they clearly haven't closed the door on RISC-V...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensilica#Adoption

[2]: https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32...

[3]: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-an...

[4]: https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/microcontroller/32-b...

[5]: https://riscv.org/members/

Over the last couple of years, yes. The GD32 and CH32V are increasingly popular. This is not so much ARM's fault directly though, as it is the complete unavailablility of STM32s forcing many companies to look for a quick replacement.

In some spaces it seems like it's gaining ground pretty fast. Western Digital, for example, seems pretty committed to replacing the ARM processors in their flash and SSD controllers with RiscV.

Yeah, look at Andes Technology for example. They are very big IP company and are doing lots of RISC-V stuff.

Of course ARM is still dominate but RISC-V is defiantly an option in that space that is growing.

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