Edge AI to help RISC-V to take 25% of processor market

News | May 20, 2024

By Peter Clarke

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AI and automotive applications will help the RISC-V open-standard instruction set architecture (ISA) take nearly 25 percent of the processor market by 2030, according to Omdia.

The market analyst predicts that RISC-V will enjoy the strongest growth in the automotive sector, although the industrial space will remain the largest application for the technology. Additionally, the rise of AI will be instrumental in the continued rise of RISC-V.

RISC-V is license-free, allowing anyone to develop hardware using the architecture and even to customize the instruction set according to the needs of the design. This will provide a key advantage of processor architecture provider ARM Holdings plc.

RISC-V has been associated with deeply embedded applications within IoT and the architecture will continue to have a notable presence in that space over the forecast period through 2030, Omdia said. Omdia predicts the spread of RISC-V to other applications including those requiring advanced compute and intelligence.

AI’s gift to RISC-V

“RISC-V makes the most sense in novel applications, where a developer doesn’t already have an existing Arm product in place,” said Edward Wilford, an analyst for IoT at Omdia, in a statement. “The rise of AI, the increase in use cases and capabilities, means a lot of new territory is being revealed and all of it has potential for RISC-V. The growth of RISC-V is concurrent with the rise of AI and especially edge AI, and that will provide a massive opportunity for ISA.”

Unit shipmets of AI processors based on RISC-V ISA 2023 to 2030. Source: Omdia.

Between 2024 and 2030, Omdia forecasts RISC-V-based processor shipments to increase by nearly 50 percent per year, culminating in 17 billion processors shipped in 2030. Some 46 percent of those processors are expected to be found in industrial applications, although the biggest growth over the forecast period will come in the automotive segment.

Omdia predicts RISC-V processors for automotive applications will increase in volume by 66 percent annually.

“RISC-V has unique, desirable aspects for the automotive industry – you can own your design in RISC-V in a way that you simply can’t with a licensed ISA, and in conversations in the industry, that’s really highlighted as an important element,” said Wilford.

Omdia is also predicting a major increase in the use of AI in automotive applications, with autonomous driving, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) all making use of AI to make each system more capable. “There is no doubt AI will be one of the largest drivers of RISC-V adoption in many segments; the efficiency and scalability of RISC-V is uniquely suited to developing processors for performing AI operations,” Wilford said.