No I'm not missing that point. My point is Qualcomm, Samsung, Intel, whoever doesn't have to pay a gatekeeper a license fee to design RISC-V cpus. They are also free to design and sell premade cores similar to how ARM does it today, Sans ISA license structure.

> Free to sell pre-made cores

You do know that Arm makes a tiny amount on each core licensed and that none of the firms you mention will have any interest in that business model. If they’ve spent a lot of money on a competitive design they will not be handing to competitors for peanuts.

Are you saying Qualcomm doesn't have interest in selling cpus to customers without paying a third party a licensing fee? That doesn't make any sense. Companies are always interested in lowering their overheads.

> But this doesn't answer the question as to where firms go if they want to license a core rather than design in-house

My original comment. Qualcomm won't be doing this. Or at least not for a fee that is in any way comparable to what Arm charges.