Can someone explain the benefit of having essentially 4 cores (2 ARM + 2 RISC-V) on the chip but only having 2 able to run simultaneously? Does this take significantly less die space than having all 4 available at all times?
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> The Financial Times has a report on Arm's "radical shake-up" of its business model. The new plan is to raise prices across the board and charge "several times more" than it currently does for chip licenses. According to the report, Arm wants to stop charging chip vendors to make Arm chips, and instead wants to charge device makers—especially smartphone manufacturers—a fee based on the overall price of the final product.
Even if the particular cores in the RP2350 aren't affected, the general trend is unfavorable to Arm licensees. Raspberry Pi has come up with a clever design that allows it to start commoditizing its complement [2]: make the cores a commodity that is open-source or available from any suitable RISC-V chip designer instead of something you must go to Arm for. Raspberry Pi can get its users accustomed to using the RISC-V cores—for example, by eventually offering better specs and more features on RISC-V than Arm. In the meantime, software that supports the Raspberry Pi Pico will be ported to RISC-V with no disruption. If Arm acts up and RISC-V support is good enough or when it becomes clear users prefer RISC-V, Raspberry Pi can drop the Arm cores.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/risc-y-business-arm-...