Now that Nvidia is about to acquire Arm, a chip designer that powers billions of devices, the focus is shifting to a more open option: RISC-V. As a result, there is growing interest in companies developing computer chips that make full use of RISC-V. Even x86 darling Intel is reportedly adopting RISC-V.

According to unnamed sources reported by Bloomberg, Intel is interested in acquiring SiFive, a fabless semiconductor company that manufactures chips with the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). The acquisition would be a $2+ billion deal, well above SiFive's last reported valuation of $500 million.

Arm already has a huge customer base and is therefore highly regarded, but its more democratized RISC-V instruction set architecture is seeing a surge in usage.

RISC-V is essentially an instruction set for building processors and compatible software; RISC-V is completely open source and can be used without expensive royalties, unlike Arm which offers similar services to technology companies.

This is all of interest to Intel because both Arm and RISC-V could one day provide an alternative to x86. PCs are still powered by x86, and the two largest manufacturers of x86 chips, Intel and AMD, control most of them. Nvidia, while not involved in the CPU game, is eager to break away from its dependence on x86 and hopes that Arm may be just the ticket.

Perhaps that is why Intel is looking at SiFive and potential RISC-V competitors in general, even though they could one day take business away from x86.

That said, it's still a long way from being a serious competitor to x86 in gaming PCs, so don't expect any major changes anytime soon; there are rumors of an Nvidia gaming laptop PC with an Arm chip, but for now, we're not convinced that's a path worth exploring. There is nothing yet to convince us that it is a path worth exploring.

The possibility of Intel acquiring SiFive is also far from definite at this point; according to Bloomberg, the company has received multiple acquisition offers and may prefer pennies on the dollar from an investment rather than a full acquisition.

Still, there is a lot of competition in the CPU market today, and not all of it is purely between today's x86 champions, Intel and AMD.