Embedded.
I am not sure it's inevitable at all. That said, it sure looks like ARM did, minus the license fees. RISC-V can enter niche markets where price / performance is necessary on the low end of price and or power.
Things are still early though. Extensions are one ambiguity. How many will crop up and what will using them look like? Does one take over the ISA essentially?
Math performance, due to no flags and multiple instructions needed where single ones or even just a few less will matter too. Not saying the devices won't perform. They will, just at the cost of code size impacting effective cache size.
And no device is really performing today.
I think they’re referring to the odd custom-ish embedded parts, e.g. Western Digital usage in mass produced storage devices that can afford novelty.
The problem is that there are really no current commodity embedded RISC-V architecture parts - Chinese dime-a-dozen pseudo-Cortex ripoffs don’t count - remotely comparable in performance/power to better current alternatives.
Benchmarks of SiFive’s high end are laughable, being grossly sub-RaspberryPi which is hardly ARM top of the line (and doesn’t claim to be such). As SiFive’s P550 hasn’t materialized beyond PR, one can hardly consider it real.
Unless some stealth startup appears with a real Zen/NeoVerse analog, I expect this triumph of hype over reality to continue.