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Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems

75 points by fork-bomber

by nrclark

3 subcomments

Most SOCs on the market today have a mix of various CPU cores. It's common to see designs with a few big ARM Cortex-A cores running an OS like Linux or Android, and then some smaller Cortex-M microcontroller cores that do housekeeping things like security checks, power management, realtime features, peripheral management, etc.
If I were to guess, Qualcomm wants to replace its various Cortex-M cores with RISC-V equivalents. This saves them money on licensing, reduces their dependency on ARM, and doesn't break customer-facing compatibility. Ventana is probably more of an aquihire to get their designer team.
"We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." -Qualcomm, probably

by Zhyl

1 subcomments

It may be a while off yet, but it's pretty clear that companies, Qualcomm chief among them, are ready to replace arm as soon as possible.

by Pet_Ant

11 subcomments

Why does Qualcomm need this? They don't need to license RISC-V.
Is all the IP they acquired with Nuvia[1] tainted? Or were they just using ARM-derived internals?
From my understanding, just slapping on a different instruction decoder isn't a big technical hurdle. Actually, I wonder if it would be possible to design a chip with both an ARM and a RISC-V decoder on the same die and just fuse-off the ARM die on select units to avoid any fees...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm#2015%E2%80%932024:_NX...

by boredatoms

3 subcomments

by phendrenad2

1 subcomments

Is this just Qualcomm buying itself another vote on the RISC-V foundation board?

by wslh

4 subcomments

2025 and counting. Apple launched the M1 in 2020. I am an Apple user but not a fanboy but everyday I wonder about the magic in Apple that is unique because even established competitors with virtually infinite money and incredible processes can't move forward. Another incredible aspect is the early addition of an NPU by Apple in a SoC.
I would love to resurrect my XPS 13s with a durable battery and working in Linux without trigerring the fan. The same for my Lenovo Xs.
In my imagination I am waiting for the billionaire geeks doing their part for fun (e.g. energy management in Linux).

by throwaway31131

2 subcomments

So much for the $1.4B spent on NUVIA.
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/startup-key-apple-goog...