China plans to encourage the use of open-source RISC-V chips across the country
Media reports have revealed Beijing’s plans to increase the use of RISC-V chips, likely to accelerate efforts to limit the country’s dependence on Western technology.
Media reports have revealed Beijing’s plans to increase the use of RISC-V chips, likely to accelerate efforts to limit the country’s dependence on Western technology.
About RISC-V
RISC-V is an open-source instruction set architecture used to develop custom processors for a variety of applications, from embedded designs to supercomputers.
Unlike proprietary processor architectures, RISC-V is an open-source instruction set architecture (ISA) that is used to develop custom processors targeting a variety of end-use applications. Originally developed at the University of California, Berkeley, the RISC-V ISA is considered the fifth generation of processors based on the Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) concept. Due to its openness and technical flaws, it has become very popular in recent years. The standard is currently managed by RISC-V International, which has over 3,000 members and has reported that over 10 billion RISC-V cores have been shipped by the end of 2022. Many RISC-V implementations are available as both open-source cores and commercial IP products.
China plans to issue its first policy guidelines to increase the use of RISC-V chips. The information could be released as early as this month, although the final date could change, the sources told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because policy discussions are still ongoing.
According to the information provided, it is being jointly developed by eight government agencies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the China National Intellectual Property Administration, they added.
Chinese government agencies and research institutes have been implementing RISC-V in recent years, considering it geopolitically neutral. Chinese chipmakers are attracted by its lower cost, but the government has yet to mention it in policy.
The main suppliers of RISC-V to China are the Alibaba Group, their subsidiary XuanTie, and the startup Nuclei System Technology, which sells commercial RISC-V processors to chip developers.
Industry executives at a RISC-V event hosted by XuanTie last week said that DeepSeek’s popularity could also help drive RISC-V adoption, as the Chinese AI startup’s models run efficiently on less powerful chips.
Smaller companies that want to use AI and DeepSeek can turn to chips designed with the RISC-V architecture, said Sun Haitao, manager of China Mobile System Integration, an ICT equipment supplier, during the event.
The US is wary of the expansion of the use of chips in China.
Read the country’s main IT news in our Telegram
Read the country’s main IT news in our Telegram
A shortage of graphics chips forced OpenAI to suspend the deployment of the new GPT-4.5 model
A shortage of graphics chips forced OpenAI to suspend the deployment of the new GPT-4.5 model
Microsoft unveils new quantum chip made from new materials that can scale to «a million qubits»
Microsoft unveils new quantum chip made from new materials that can scale to «a million qubits»
Harvard researchers have developed a silicon chip that mimics complex brain processes. Why it’s a breakthrough in neuromorphic engineering and AI
Harvard researchers have developed a silicon chip that mimics complex brain processes. Why it’s a breakthrough in neuromorphic engineering and AI
