Please somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I really don’t find the “chip makers don’t have to pay licence fees” a compelling argument that RISC-V is good for the consumer. Theres only a few foundries capable of making CPUs, and the desktop market seems incredibly hard to break into.
I imagine it’s likely that the cost of ISA licencing isn’t what’s holding back competition in the CPU space, but rather its a good old fashioned duopoly combined with a generally high cost of entry.
Of course, more options is better IMO, and the Linux community’s focus on FOSS should make hopping architectures much easier than on Windows or MacOS. But I’d be surprised if we see a laptop/desktop CPU based on RISC-V competing with current options anytime soon.
I thought the route still hadn’t been finalised for the northern leg of HS2. Also high speed means you’re less flexible, as you need to go in a straighter line than normal rail.
I agree that it seems unlikely that the extra effort to complete the northern leg of HS2 would be greater than that of starting from scratch, but I’ve been surprised before.