RISC-V isn’t in the same scenario. There’s one company behind ARM with a few external companies with architecture licenses (who doesn’t share their contributions), and ARM competes mostly just on the same commercial terms so for a long time it wasn’t worth investing in single core performance because they could instead fill the efficiency niche.
Also there’s more knowledge on how to build high performance cores. Doesn’t mean it’s trivial, but it means the lead isn’t several decades. With enough investment you can make it happen faster. And there’s a national security motivation for investing.
RISC-V isn’t in the same scenario. There’s one company behind ARM with a few external companies with architecture licenses (who doesn’t share their contributions), and ARM competes mostly just on the same commercial terms so for a long time it wasn’t worth investing in single core performance because they could instead fill the efficiency niche.
Also there’s more knowledge on how to build high performance cores. Doesn’t mean it’s trivial, but it means the lead isn’t several decades. With enough investment you can make it happen faster. And there’s a national security motivation for investing.
That may be so (hopefully), I’m just a layman quoting an expert.