NXP, Qualcomm and others join forces to take on ARM with RISC-V

NXP and four other major chipmakers are taking aim at ARM’s dominance by starting a company tasked with accelerating adoption of the RISC-V architecture. To be established in Germany, the as-yet unnamed company brings together Robert Bosch, Infineon, Nordic Semiconductor, NXP and Qualcomm to develop reference architectures based on the open-source standard. The initial application focus will be automotive, with mobile and IoT to be added at a later stage.

“The creation of a one-stop-shop ecosystem where customers can select turnkey assets will strengthen the adoption of RISC-V across many European industries,” said NXP CTO Lars Reger in a statement. “An open collaboration with like-minded companies to continually enhance innovative RISC-V microprocessor IP and ensure a robust and reliable supply of the technology is the ideal answer,” added CTO Svein-Egil Nielsen of Nordic Semiconductor, which specializes in wireless technology for the IoT.