Looking forward to "The Year of the RISC-V Desktop" articles.
That's a joke, but I think Windows vs. Linux is the right reference frame here, assuming that RISC-V proves out. Those who want to roll their own and control their own destiny may go with RISC-V, while those who want a packaged solution will go ARM. And ARM will have to get better to compete.
Western Digital has gone with RISC-V for a controller, because Western Digital is the kind of company that wants to commoditize its inputs so it can sell a packaged solution to its customers as cheaply as possible. I can also see Amazon or Google finding uses for RISC-V in their data centers.
Phones ... I'm not so sure. Maybe Apple could go that way, as they're vertically integrated and already make their Ax chips in house. But the Android OEMs wouldn't unless Google leads the way.
Jokes aside. Since February you can already buy RISC-V SoCs that run Linux... at pretty high prices, e.g., https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unleashed costs 1000$ bucks and the expansion board costs 2000$...
Still not practical for the masses, but not more expensive than similar extravagant architectures like PowerPCs (IIRC a PowerPC9 desktop system costs about 9000$ today).
Someone joked that you could get a 30$ xeon system on ebay from a couple of years ago that would crush these on pretty much any benchmark, but who knows, maybe some day riscv chips will become cheaper and more powerful. What we are seeing in the market today are the very first such systems, from the very first vendors.
Oh, I'm sure that there will be hobbyists who do this. Just like there are people who run Arch on their home PC, or automate their house with Arduinos. The joke about "The Year of the Linux Desktop" is predicting mass consumer adoption. That doesn't seem too likely, unless someone like Apple or Google decides to move their stack over to silicon they can design and control in-house without need for ARM's long term support.
That's a joke, but I think Windows vs. Linux is the right reference frame here, assuming that RISC-V proves out. Those who want to roll their own and control their own destiny may go with RISC-V, while those who want a packaged solution will go ARM. And ARM will have to get better to compete.
Western Digital has gone with RISC-V for a controller, because Western Digital is the kind of company that wants to commoditize its inputs so it can sell a packaged solution to its customers as cheaply as possible. I can also see Amazon or Google finding uses for RISC-V in their data centers.
Phones ... I'm not so sure. Maybe Apple could go that way, as they're vertically integrated and already make their Ax chips in house. But the Android OEMs wouldn't unless Google leads the way.