RISC-V Hits 25% Market Penetration as Qualcomm and Meta Lead the Shift to Open-Source Silicon

The global semiconductor landscape has reached a historic inflection point as the open-source RISC-V architecture officially secured 25% market penetration this month, signaling the end of the long-standing architectural monopoly held by proprietary giants. This milestone, verified by industry analysts in late December 2025, marks a seismic shift in how the world’s most advanced hardware is designed, licensed, and deployed. Driven by a collective industry push for “architectural sovereignty,” RISC-V has evolved from an academic experiment into the cornerstone of the next generation of computing.

  • Laser@feddit.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    There are plenty nowadays from what I remember.

    1. They save on the ARM licensing fees. I’m not sure about the details, but I believe it’s both a flat fee and cost per chip produced
    2. They can freely add proprietary vendor extensions, which I’m not sure ARM allows
    3. They’re less restricted in general chip design (I think ARM has restricted options in the last years, Apple has some special privileges as a founding member)