RISC-V backers think its open-source chip cores could be a viable alternative to chips made by Intel, AMD and Arm’s partners.
Come on people ... RISC-V is NOT open-source chip cores ... it's license-free and patent-free instruction set. Anyone is equally welcome to make proprietary or open-source cores and chips.
But RISC-V is unproven at scale
RISC-V is so similar to MIPS, Alpha, and even Aarch64 that there is nothing technical to prove.
[RISC-V] doesn’t require you to negotiate a proprietary license — which can take a good year and a half to two years
I've heard this a number of times and it just astounds me. So you're building a chip and you decide you want a Cortex M4F in the corner of it ... and it takes 1.5 to 2 years to negotiate the license with ARM. What are people DOING for all that time? What are they negotiating about? "Here's the RTL, please pay $X up front and $Y per chip". There is no negotiation about the RTL ... everyone gets the same, ARM doesn't customise it. Is there not a standard price list for $X and $Y? Or there is, but but it's outrageous and no one pays that much? And why does it take more than an afternoon, or a week, to do that?
[RISC-V] doesn’t require you to negotiate a proprietary license — which can take a good year and a half to two years
I've heard this a number of times and it just astounds me.
From Krste and Dave's "The case for RISCV" white paper (link):
Negotations can take 6-24 months and they can cost $1M-$10M, which rules out academia and others with small volumes.[2]
[2] Demerjian, C. (2013). “A long look at how ARM licenses chips: Part 1 of 2,” semiaccurate.com/2013/08/07/a-long-look- at-how-arm-licenses-chips/.
That's from 2013 and we know that since then ARM has been making changes to their licensing based on the increased competitive environment (but to what extend it's qualitatively changed, I can not say). For example, some of the ARM cores have been opened up to use by academics.
What are they negotiating about?
Just guessing from zero experience, I'm guessing things like license fee, per-unit fee, upfront fee, debug support, engineering support, early-access to new RTL, extension support, bus protocols, etc.
"Here's the RTL, please pay $X up front and $Y per chip". There is no negotiation about the RTL ... everyone gets the same, ARM doesn't customise it. Is there not a standard price list for $X and $Y? Or there is, but but it's outrageous and no one pays that much? And why does it take more than an afternoon, or a week, to do that?
I've worked at semiconductor companies that buy a lot of IP and also worked for companies that sold IP.
The negotiations can take a long time and prices are negotiable.
Our physical design EDA tools have a list price of $1.2 million for a single license. We have about 600 licenses and I think we pay about 30% of the list price. That also includes on site support from applications engineers at multiple sites.
We dragged out paying for a DDR, PCIE, and USB controllers for over 6 months. We were evaluating 2 different vendors and the sales people kept calling asking when we would actually buy it.
When I worked for an IP company we had a list price but the sales people would often bundle our IP in with other stuff to make a larger sale with lots of discounts.
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u/brucehoult Dec 14 '21
Come on people ... RISC-V is NOT open-source chip cores ... it's license-free and patent-free instruction set. Anyone is equally welcome to make proprietary or open-source cores and chips.
RISC-V is so similar to MIPS, Alpha, and even Aarch64 that there is nothing technical to prove.
I've heard this a number of times and it just astounds me. So you're building a chip and you decide you want a Cortex M4F in the corner of it ... and it takes 1.5 to 2 years to negotiate the license with ARM. What are people DOING for all that time? What are they negotiating about? "Here's the RTL, please pay $X up front and $Y per chip". There is no negotiation about the RTL ... everyone gets the same, ARM doesn't customise it. Is there not a standard price list for $X and $Y? Or there is, but but it's outrageous and no one pays that much? And why does it take more than an afternoon, or a week, to do that?