I am giving RISC-V 5 to 10 years to catch up in my estimates. I think that is fair. The momentum behind RISC-V is massive and even then I am not saying it is fast.
5 years is a flash in chip design. Initial design to tape-out is 3 years at the leading edge if you're really good.
Maybe in 5-10 years, RISC-V gains share in initial designs, but the semiconductor design process is loooong.
And if you're going to talk about Microcontrollers and simpler chips, keep in mind we had a bunch of other RISC architectures a decade ago that all lost to Cortex-M for simplicity/cost reasons (RIP MIPS).
I think RISC-V eats ARM's lunch at the low end across the board over the next 5 years. Financially that is okay in the near term for ARM as the major profits are all in the high end designs.
But all that will be left in a few years is the high end areas and where there is a lot of lock in to the ISA.
It isn't yet clear when RISC-V will be ready to compete at the highest end of things, but that is where Jim Keller comes in.
RISC-V is a classic market disruptor for ARM, just as ARM was a disruptor to Intel.
