Samsung Defection From ARM to RISC-V.

Could Samsung be the first big defection from ARM since the SoftBank takeover?

It was always thought that, when ARM relinquished its independence, its customers would look around for other alternatives.

The nice thing about RISC-V is that it’s independent, open source and royalty-free.

And RISC-V is what Samsung is reported to be using for an IoT CPU in preference to ARM.

Now SoftBank made a point of saying that its take-over of ARM was to get into IoT. If Samsung is now going to RISC-V for its IoT CPU, this affects the scale of Softbank’s aspirations and may persuade others to defect to RISC-V.

The Samsung RISC-V MCU is said to be aimed squarely at the ARM Cortex M0.

Nvidia and Qualcomm are already using RISC-V in the development of GPU memory controllers and IoT processors.

Although, as Intel found, it’s almost impossible to replace an incumbent processor architecture in a major product area, which means that ARM’s place as the incumbent architecture in cellphones is secure, at the moment there is no incumbent processor architecture in IoT or MCU – so these are up for grabs by any aspiring rival processor architecture.


Comments

22 comments

  1. I agree with everything you say Jamo, except for the bit about getting his hands on more capital easily. Masa sounds a bit of a blow-hard – promising to double ARM’s Cambridge headcount and create 50,000 new jobs in the USA while actually cutting jobs at Sprint. It’s all rather unconvincing.

  2. The threat, IMHO, Jamo lies in Masa’s inability to make a profit – something Warren Buffett seems to find straightforward. Profitable companies tend to invest inwardly, loss-making companies tend to cut inwardly which is what Masa is currently doing at Sprint to the tune of $2bn in job losses. That’s the threat to ARM. Is Masa one of those who, as Buffett said, has been swimming without trunks to be revealed when the tide (of funny money debt) goes out?

    • David, if debt is becoming too great, capital can be released relatively easily enough I would have thought. I still think a Japanese takeover was way more preferable to a Chinese one. The scary thing would have been that the UK gov’t wouldn’t have blocked that one but the US definitely would have if it had been a US company.

  3. From Reuters today. Masa wants to turn his SoftBank into the Berkshire Hathaway of Tech.
    Can’t see the major risk for ARM. BH companies do not suffer unduly as part of Warren’s conglomerate.

  4. Yep Franz with phones it’s tricky – everything is locked up pretty tight, but with MCU, IoT or most other things the processor architecture and OS are exchangeable

  5. Well not surprising at all. After all Samsung is a second largest semiconductor manufacturer & they do know that price & efficiency is what it will win a IoT war & by all means it will be a big market probably biggest ever. So RISC-V is the only logical choice to go for as it will alow competitiveness in the price aria. Second thing to go for would be a FD-SOI (regarding both price & power consumption along with mixed analogue digital RF) & Samsung do have a fully operational 28nm FD-SOI process & a production but we will have to wait a little more to see about that.

  6. Samsung ever try to defect from android with its Tizen os, but you know…

  7. Absolutely SEPAM, there is no shortage of wannabe IoT processors and Andes is very much a contender. But it seems unlikely that any architecture will become dominant in the same way as ARM is dominant in cellphone or x86 in PC. IoT is such a variegated, undefined, mess of a product category there is probably no need for the same degree of inter-operability as you need in cell phone or PC which absolutely require a single processor architecture,

  8. Maybe incumbent is the wrong word then Frank, I meant to say that cellphones have a single dominant processor architecture. IoT doesn’t. As you say, loads of architectures are positioning themselves for IoT.

  9. Maybe the bankers took charges over Softbank assets so they’ll get their loans repaid even if the deal forces Softbank into bankruptcy, AnotherDavid. And we can blame the pols – they waved the deal through to please the City when the entire tech community opposed it. SoftBank were suckered into buying Sprint – which has been losing a bundle for four years – and then suckered into paying $32bn for ARM – an IP company!

  10. I guess we ca’t blame the politicians for this, they are just not that clever. But the bankers who have bankrolled the deal?

  11. RISC V is certainly interesting … but aren’t there four incumbent architectures to compete with? According to IDC, back in 2013 the area we would call today IoT, was split between ARM, MIPS, Power and INTEL with 33%, 23%, 26% and 10%, respectively. It drove $39.7B of silicon value. See my related Blog here: http://semiengineering.com/game-of-eco-systems/

    • SecretEuroPatentAgentMan

      There is also AndesTech which went out of stealth mode not too long ago. It seems to me that they are aiming for the IoT segment and emphasises power efficiency.

  12. Could be Dr Bob, Softbank’s purchase could be the most disastrous M&A since Time Warner bought AOL.

  13. and so it begins

  14. Oh good Jamo, excellent

  15. … anyone can use the ISA … you do not need to be a member of the Foundation to use RISC-V … you need to be a member of the Foundation to label it as such (use the logo)

  16. No absolutely not, Jamo, ARM architecture is secure in smartphones, but in other fields it is not the dominant architecture and customers could replace it with RISC-V with little consequence.

  17. Perhaps in a Samsung low profile consumer electronics product but taking unnecessary risks in a flagship smartphone ? Does it really make that much difference if ARM is now owned by Softbank versus other architectures, open source or other ?
    It may be the chipset supplier’s responsibility but OEMs would have a big say on major changes.

  18. True, Jamo, Qualcomm and Nvidia are, but not Samsung

  19. Samsung are not even listed in the RISC-V Foundation members directory.

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