Is RISC-V Poised to Benefit From Arm's Licensing Changes?

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Amid industry challenges and after facing financial difficulties, ARM is considering different ways to increase its revenue, such as the possibility of raising the license price and expanding the license scope. This comes after the NVIDIA acquisition and with the ongoing semiconductor trade war. ARM China, Qualcomm, and other semiconductor vendors are looking at alternative business models, including the adoption of RISC-V and open-source designs to break from ARM's monopoly. What challenges has ARM been facing, what exactly has been reported, and why could this be the break RISC-V needs?

www.electropages.com/, Mar. 27, 2023 – 

What challenges has ARM been facing?

Over the past few years, ARM has faced numerous challenges throughout the industry, all resulting in a company starting to show financial troubles. While it is hard to exactly pinpoint where the difficulties started, the proposed acquisition of ARM by NVIDIA was certainly one of the first signs.

From NVIDIAs perspective, acquiring ARM would have been a major boost to its own technologies, being able to integrate the latest ARM technology into its devices while simultaneously targeting the server and data centre markets with combined ARM/NVIDIA solutions. Of course, this is not exactly how the rest of the industry saw the acquisition, instead accusing NVIDIA of looking to control ARM technologies and gain an unfair advantage over its competitors. After two years of debating and legal challenges, the acquisition failed, leaving the rest of the industry to celebrate as ARM would remain an independent semiconductor IP vendor.

However, many of those who were quick to object to the acquisition may not have considered the financial situation at ARM. The failure of NVIDIA left ARM in a state of limbo, trying to find new funding sources, including the possibility of going public via an IPO. At the same time, the ongoing semiconductor trade war between the West and China has seen ARM China reduce staff by 14%, and the main branch of ARM has already removed 40% of staff introduced by ARM's former owner, SoftBank.

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