Design for differentiation: architecture licenses in RISC-V
May 16, 2022
I was discussing with a colleague about the concept of architecture license in RISC-V. I realized that, in the open-source world, it can be a little tricky to grasp.
In a traditional processor IP model, there is a clear distinction between an off-the-shelf IP license that gives some level of configuration but no customization, and a fairly expensive architecture license enabling a licensee to use the instruction set with their own custom microarchitecture.
With RISC-V, the complication comes from the fact that it is often described as “an open-source architecture”, so people believe that some source code is licensed. But actually that is not the case at all.
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