Qualcomm Technologies and Google announced this week that they are expanding an existing partnership to include the creation of a new wearables solution for use with Google’s Wear OS that will be based on the increasingly popular RISC-V architecture.
The announcement comes as Qualcomm may be looking to side-step some of its future reliance on Arm IP in favor of RISC-V, an open-source instruction set architecture that can be leveraged to create chips for a variety of devices. Amid legal jousting with Arm over changes in licensing practices, Qualcomm has started to embrace RISC-V, including aligning with Google, Intel, and others in the RISC-V Software Ecosystem last spring, and joining NXP and Bosch, among others, to invest in a RISC-V hardware joint venture back in August.
The RISC-V Snapdragon Wear offering from Qualcomm is believed to be the first RISC-V-based solution for an Android operating platform.
Jack Gold, president and principal analyst of J. Gold Associates, has been following these RISC-V moves, and said in a LinkedIn post that the expanded collaboration between Qualcomm and Google is likely a “direct result” of the Arm licensing dispute, which could continue to drive Arm licensees toward RISC-V.
He added, “While RISC V is not yet ready for higher end processing and replacing things like smartphone processors and servers, at least not yet, it is clearly powerful enough for smaller devices like wearables and IoT devices.”
He further stated that over the next few years, RISC-V could climb up through the device and market food chain to become a significant competitor to Arm, “...and we expect Qualcomm to continue to expand its Snapdragon platform with RISC-V components.”
As tantalizing as that sounds, the new plan for wearables based RISC-V is for now pretty thin on details, with Qualcomm and Google not saying much about new devices or when the market might see them.
A statement from the companies called the arrangement “a milestone” in the ongoing development of a commercial ecosystem fr RISC-V, but added, “Commercial product launch of the RISC-V wearable-based solution timing will be disclosed at a later date.”
“We are excited to leverage RISC-V and expand our Snapdragon Wear platform as a leading silicon provider for Wear OS,” said Dino Bekis, vice president and general
manager, Wearables and Mixed Signal Solutions, Qualcomm. “Our Snapdragon Wear platform innovations will help the Wear OS ecosystem rapidly evolve and streamline new device launches.”