(MENAFN- Asia Times) New product launches by Chinese IC (integrated circuit) design companies have brought renewed attention to efforts to get around US semiconductor sanctions by using open-source RISC-V architecture.
Pronounced“risk-five,” RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on Reduced Instruction Set Computer design principles. Conceived at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2010, it is a free, non-proprietary platform for the development of IC processors. Previous RISC generations, also developed at Berkeley, were not open source.
The combined efforts of government, academia and private companies, including high-tech leaders Alibaba and Tencent, are creating a wide range of home-grown processors that are beyond the reach of American export restrictions and other politically motivated interference.
From consumer electronics to artificial intelligence, they are developing an independent Chinese semiconductor device eco-system, with the support of the worldwide open-source RISC-V community.
Proprietary instruction set architectures from Intel, AMD and other American companies are subject to direct US government control. Those from Arm, the hugely successful British RISC design company owned by Japan's Softbank, are regarded by the Chinese as high risk due to potential US influence on their owner.
The RISC-V Foundation was established in Delaware in 2015 to support and manage the open-source technology, with the Institute of Computing Technologies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as one of the founders. Others founding members include Google, Qualcomm, Western Digital, Hitachi and Samsung. Huawei and Alibaba joined the organization later.
In 2020, the Foundation was incorporated in Switzerland as the RISC-V International Association, moving out of the United States to avoid potential disruption caused by then-president Donald Trump's anti-China trade policy. China was lucky that Trump, while inflicting severe punishment on Huawei and ZTE, did not target RISC-V, and that RISC-V moved to Switzerland before the more thorough and exacting Joe Biden administration took power.
RISC-V now claims more than 3,100 members in some 70 countries. Its mission statement reads:“RISC-V combines a modular technical approach with an open, royalty-free ISA – meaning that anyone, anywhere can benefit from the IP contributed and produced by RISC-V. As a non-profit, RISC-V does not maintain any commercial interest in products or services. As an open standard, anyone may leverage RISC-V as a building block in their open or proprietary solutions and services.”
Officials in Shanghai introduced financial incentives for RISC-V development in 2018. That same year, also in Shanghai, Chinese RISC-V specialist StarFive was founded with the support of SiFive, the technology leader headquartered in Santa Clara. Backed by Intel Capital and Qualcomm Ventures, SiFive promotes RISC-V worldwide.
StarFive's RISC-V central processing units (CPUs) are designed to compete with Arm in computing, data center, telecom, auto and industrial applications. Fabricated using 12-nm process technology, they are aimed at high volume markets and are within the production capabilities of Chinese foundries should the Americans decide to shut off the company's access to TSMC.
StarFive's VisionFive 2 compact single-board computer sells for around $60 abd features a 1.5 GHz quad-core RISC-V processor, support for up to 8GB of RAM, and a GPU with 3D graphics support. Photo: Liliputing
StarFive also develops tailored RISC-V system-on-chip infrastructure solutions such as a city gas pipeline system that includes smart meters, data transmission, system management and data and network security. According to management,“StarFive has developed an industrial internet security product with completely independent intellectual property rights.”
StarFive's other products include an image and video processing platform for home, public and industrial security.
In August of this year, T-Head, the IC design division of Alibaba, announced the Wujian 600 development platform for the design of system-on-chip devices for embedded applications in video conferencing, medical imaging, home-use robots and other products.
According to Calista Redmond, chief executive of RISC-V International,“The Wujian 600 development platform enables powerful edge SoCs with enhanced frequency and increased storage for robust edge-AI computing. The developer ecosystem supporting Xuantie [the CPU used in an advanced Wujian SoC] on Linux and Android further strengthens the RISC-V software ecosystem.”
Nuclei System Technology, also headquartered in Shanghai, was founded in 2018 by Bob Hu, the designer of the first open-source RISC-V core in China and an active promoter of RISC-V technology. The company's products include processor IP for microcontrollers, edge computing, security, storage, virtual reality, data center, telecom and low power internet-of-things applications.
Among its partners, Nuclei lists the RISC-V Foundation (RISC-V International), the China RISC-V Alliance, the China RISC-V Industry Alliance (Shanghai-based RISC-V startups and IC design contractor VeriSilicon Holdings), the Shanghai IC Industry Association (SICA), four universities, Xiaomi, Tencent and numerous other Chinese companies.
Those companies include Geoforce Chip, a designer of power management, audio and communications devices; TIH Microelectronics, which specializes in cryptographic and network security chips; Taolink Technologies, which focuses on wireless IoT technology; and ChipIntelli, which provides speech recognition and data processing software and chip designs.
RISC-V technology has become increasingly popular in China. A RISC-V Shanghai Day in 2018 attracted fewer than 1,000 attendees. The first RISC-V Summit China, hosted by ShanghaiTech University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Software in 2021, attracted more than 30,000 attendees, most of them online due to Covid. The second, held in August of this year, reportedly attracted more than three times as many.
The RISC-V Summit China 2022 included keynote speeches by Mark Himelstein, the CTO of RISC-V International, and Yungang Bao, the leader of the XiangShan high-performance RISC-V processor development team at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and more than 80 tutorials and technical presentations. Sponsors included Alibaba's T-Head, Nuclei System Technology, Qinheng Microelecronics, and Andes Technology from Taiwan.
Last April, the Institute of Computing Technology announced that the new Beijing Open Source Chip Research Institute had started operations with projects based on the XiangShan processor. XiangShan is a joint creation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; the Pengcheng Laboratory in Beijing, which is dedicated to telecom and internet-related R&D; Vcore, a RISC-V processor designer; and private companies including Alibaba and Tencent.
There has been an explosion of RISC-V-related activity over the past several years that seems likely to continue into the foreseeable future. In short, US sanctions are causing what they were intended to prevent – the development of an independent Chinese IC product portfolio that will both reduce China's dependence on imported technology and support its domestic and export industries.
This has been accomplished with the support of the worldwide open-source RISC-V community. As noted on the RISC-V International website,“RISC-V does not take a political position on behalf of any geography. We are proud to see organizations from around the world working together in this new era of processor innovation.”
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