5-2-2024 (BEIJING) China’s strategic move to embrace open-source chips comes amidst mounting export controls imposed by the United States. The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Academy of Military Sciences recently unveiled a patent for a high-performance chip developed using the RISC-V open-source standard. This move signifies China’s attempt to reshape the global chip market, estimated to be worth half a trillion dollars, and reduce its dependence on Western technology in the face of US sanctions.
RISC-V, an instruction set architecture used in designing various chips, offers a geopolitically neutral alternative to the dominant Western standards such as x86 and Arm. While the US and UK export controls restrict China’s access to advanced semiconductors based on these standards, RISC-V’s open-source nature allows China to pursue technological self-reliance.
Chinese state entities, research institutes, and Beijing itself have invested over $50 million in RISC-V projects from 2018 to 2023, as documented in academic articles, patents, government documents, and tenders. Although RISC-V currently represents a fraction of the chip market, recent breakthroughs and applications in China, supported by government funding, have raised hopes that it could challenge the duopoly of x86 and Arm in the future.
RISC-V chips developed by Chinese firms and research institutes are already being utilized in self-driving cars, artificial intelligence models, and data storage centers. The architecture’s simplicity and energy efficiency, coupled with the ability to customize it to suit specific needs, have contributed to its growing popularity. By 2022, more than 10 billion RISC-V chips had been shipped globally, with half of them made in China.
China’s emphasis on RISC-V is driven by the need to insulate against potential restrictions on Western technologies, particularly in the case of Arm, which temporarily halted licensing to Chinese companies like Huawei in 2019. Although RISC-V chips currently lag behind Arm in complex computing tasks, the performance gap is narrowing due to increased investment and the proliferation of RISC-V startups.
The rise of RISC-V can be traced back to its development at the University of California, Berkeley, and its subsequent adoption by tech giants in China. In a strategic move, the RISC-V International foundation, responsible for overseeing the standard’s development, relocated its headquarters from Delaware to Switzerland following concerns about the geopolitical landscape. This move aimed to ensure the continued growth of the open standard while mitigating uncertainties related to the Chinese market.
While some US lawmakers have proposed imposing export restrictions on RISC-V, such a move would impede the development of innovative chips. The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry Security has refrained from commenting on the matter.
China’s investment in open-source RISC-V chips reflects its long-term strategy to achieve technological self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on Western semiconductor technologies.
