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

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://markets.financialcontent.com/wral/article/tokenring-2025-12-26-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.

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just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
25% of what?

1/4 of 100% of what?

I’ve seen zero RISC devices in the wild, and the phrasing here wants me to think I should have by now.

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- stsquad@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I assume microcontrollers. Most of those are invisible to consumers.
  
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  - the_tab_key@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Microcontroller market is dominated by ARM. There’s no way RISC-V has 25 % of that market yet.
    
    Saying this as someone who has been eagerly awaiting RISC-V microcontrollers for years.
    
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- Thorry@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  This is about datacenters and HPC, hence the reference to Meta.
  
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- adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Maybe 25% of the RISC-V market? Like, they’re now meeting 1/4 of the demand?
  
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rafoix@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Qualcomm and Meta? Two technology companies that I want zero products from.

One is a patent troll and the other is an inept corporation that is directly instrumental is the destruction of society.

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priapus@piefed.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is AI generated garbage with no sources.

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MrSoup@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Mostly Qualcomm’s cpus for automotive and enterprise servers and Meta’s (Facebook) custom AI chips.

For consumer products is still an hobbist with Linux exclusive.

SteamDeck 2 will still have an ARM.

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- vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  SteamDeck 2 will still have an ARM.
  
  Of what little I know, ARM core designs should be relatively easy to repurpose for RISC-V ISA, once the set of extensions normally used becomes certain. Most of the work being in decoders.
  
  So it just comes down to a still new and not entirely stable ISA. Like with network protocols.
  
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2910000@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I think it’s interesting that the phrase “ARM-free” roadmap is being used. I had no idea there had been so much market penetration of RISC-V already

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- echodot@feddit.uk ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I don’t think it’s the consumer market because I’ve seen basically nothing with that system architecture. Actually that’s not true I know of one product that uses RISC-V, and that is a development board that you can drop into a Framework laptop chassis. Which is the development purposes only in barely works.
  
  I have not seen anything marketed as just a general device that uses RISC-V chips.
  
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Goun@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
For real? 25%? That’s impressive!

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- iopq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I mean, don’t Nvidia GPUs have a RISC-V system processor?
  
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witty_username@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
What incentives are there for companies like meta here?
Is it going to be proprietary drivers for open chip designs?

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- evol@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I feel like its a similar decision why companies adopted linux over enterprise unix’s. Its kind of interesting how decentralized/open solutions are mostly used by companies versus the public.
  
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- Laser@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  There are plenty nowadays from what I remember.
  
  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
  
  They can freely add proprietary vendor extensions, which I’m not sure ARM allows
  
  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)
  
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Sims@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
"Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ: QCOM) $2.4 billion acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems and Meta Platforms, Inc.’s (NASDAQ: META) strategic takeover of Rivos have sent "

Mostly US state propaganda… The big US tech *unts just bought up smaller corps, and have now been put on a pedestal as the ‘world leaders’ of that segment. Well, that’s one way to do it I guess…

Some none-verified AI-slop for all: Key Findings from Chinese Sources

China’s Shipment Dominance

According to Chinese industry reports and the RISC-V International Foundation, China contributed over 50% of global RISC-V chip shipments in 2024. This is based on data from the 5th RISC-V China Summit, where officials stated that global shipments exceeded 100 billion chips, with China accounting for more than half.

Scale of Chinese RISC-V Ecosystem

Over 60 Chinese companies are actively involved in RISC-V, spanning IP design, SoC development, manufacturing, and ecosystem support. This contrasts sharply with the original list of 5 companies, which included only one Chinese firm (StarFive). Key Chinese players beyond StarFive include: 芯原 (VeriSilicon) – Leading IP provider and chair of China RISC-V Industry Alliance (CRVIC). 中兴微电子 (ZTE Microelectronics) – Major contributor to RISC-V-based communications chips. 阿里巴巴 (Alibaba) – Through its T-Head division, developing RISC-V processors for cloud and edge computing. 华为海思 (HiSilicon) – Investing in RISC-V for future chip designs.

Market Momentum and Investment

Government Support: China has prioritized RISC-V as part of its semiconductor self-sufficiency strategy, with significant state funding and policy incentives. Research Output: Chinese academia and companies are prolific in RISC-V research papers and patent filings, accelerating innovation. Ecosystem Growth: The China RISC-V Industry Alliance (CRVIC) has over 190 member units as of 2024, fostering collaboration and standardization.
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evol@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I never got the hype from Open source supporters about RISC-V. Its a permissive license so any consumer use will end up with companies EEE into there own product line (Could you then patent that architecture?). Weirdly I feel like the ARM model where a central company licenses the chipset out to many companies is kind of better as atleast you get competition between chip designers.

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abcdqfr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
TIL! Had no idea there was existing alternatives to architecture status quo! Very cool work here

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- echodot@feddit.uk ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. Currently basically nothing runs on it, even most Linux kernels don’t support it. I’m sure that will change in the future when CPUs become available.
  
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