It seems more likely RISC-V will displace ARM on the low-end where margins on things like licencing are the tightest. There are already high performance ARM designs for servers in particular, and that's more applicable to desktops than any RISC-V chip currently available. X86 will give them both a run for their money but it no longer seems completely obvious that everything hefty will still be running on x86 five or ten years from now, for the first time in a couple decades, really.
Do you think adversarial country relations specially from sanctioned countries like China and Russia might count in favor of Risc-V development and adoption?
I cannot comment on Russia, not an area I am familiar with. But I believe that is already the case with China.
An industry planning organization in China has indicated the plan to standardize on RISC-V across the board, with domestically designed and manufactured processors. The intent there is, I'm guessing, to disentangle China from any IP issues, or supply interruptions should trade be disrupted. Chinese media has openly stated as such, for example this article from Sina.com (in Chinese): https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/2021-01-18/doc-ikftssan7728...
Since it gives me reading practice, I've done a quick and probably slightly butchered partial translation:
Could expanding RISC-V be the cure to China's shortage of ICs?
In April of 2020, RISC-V Foundation's CEO sent an email alerting the Foundation's members. The email stated that "We have now established the RISC-V International Association in Switzerland".
The RISC-V foundation, which has been established now for five years, was originally founded in America. On account of worries about being influenced by political factors, it has moved to Switzerland, a country well known for its consistent neutrality and practice of supporting open source.
[...]
Over the last three to four years, in China's technology circles, more and more people have been discussing the adoption of RISC-V. This follows political factors having an increased influence on the science & technology industry, as well as ARM being purchased by NVIDIA. China's technology companies are ever more worried that the x86 and ARM architectures, in the hands of American organizations, may cut off from access in the future.
In contrast, the open source RISC-V does not have similar concerns. "Regarding domestic Chinese companies, the relocation of the RISC-V Foundation's official headquarters to Switzerland is a very favourable development." said CEO Xu Tao of Saifang Technologies, a domestic Chinese manufacturer of RISC-V processors. "Most significantly, this means that the adoption of the open source RISC-V instruction set, open source software, and public standards can be utilized without any fear of unforeseen complications. It's my belief that this is an opportunity to establish the independence of IP for Chinese processors."
The EU seems to see RISC-V as a solution to its domestic manufacturing, supply chain and security issues. Many German defense conpanies invested in the ecosystem (e.g. Hensoldt sponsored the recently frontpaged RISC-V port and verification of the seL4 kernel). I guess Switzerland is an attractive location for that too.
