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Or maybe they were just trying to pay a lot less money, and then they got caught at their little trick.
Do you know how much money you have to pay to make a RISC V chip? Even less than that, since it’s free
Development is never free, especially, if you have to build new knowhow and can not build upon the one they have built at development of ARM chips.
By that logic every company would just run on linux. Free to use ≠ free to implement and support.
You have not read the article.