Customer demand. If you're Google or AWS or any sufficiently large customer and the black box firmware is getting in your way, you have the resources to roll your own. Then the incumbents not only lose their business, they face the prospect of new competition when that company publishes the documentation and firmware because they're more interested in commodifying their complement and getting bug reports on what they're now using internally than in competing in that commodity market.
Then from the other end, RISC-V is starting to get good enough that relatively small companies can put the pieces together into useful open products that compete with closed incumbents.
The hardware vendors are better off to get in front of it and publish the same for their own hardware so they can gain some market share in the time before everybody is doing it.
Then from the other end, RISC-V is starting to get good enough that relatively small companies can put the pieces together into useful open products that compete with closed incumbents.
The hardware vendors are better off to get in front of it and publish the same for their own hardware so they can gain some market share in the time before everybody is doing it.