By Che Pan and Brenda Goh
Beijing/Shanghai (Reuters) – Two sources have introduced the issue, with China planning for the first time to issue guidelines nationwide to encourage the use of open source RISC-V chips nationwide as Beijing accelerates efforts to curb the country’s reliance on Western technology.
Sources said that while the final date may change, policy guidelines on promoting the use of RISC-V chips can be released this month.
They added that it was drafted by eight government agencies, including China Cyberspace Management, China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology and China National Intellectual Property Administration.
Sources refused to be named policy discussions, and are still in progress. The four departments did not respond to requests for comment.
RISC-V is an open source technology designed for designing a range of fewer chips, from smartphones to CPUs on AI servers.
It competes globally with proprietary and more commonly used chip building technologies, including the X86, led by US companies Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, and ARM developed by Arm Holdings, owned by SoftBank Group.
In China, in recent years, national entities and research institutions have been eagerly accepting RISC-V, viewing it as geopolitical. The cost of Chinese chip designers is low, but the government has not mentioned it in its policy yet.
As friction between Washington and Beijing grew, especially technically, its expanded use in the United States has been cautiously welcomed in the United States.
Reuters reported in 2023 that some U.S. lawmakers are putting pressure on the Biden administration to restrict U.S. companies from engaging in the technology rather than worrying that Beijing is leveraging its open source nature to push its own semiconductor industry.
China’s largest for-profit RISC-V intellectual property providers include Alibaba’s Xuantie and Startup Nuclei System Technology, which sell commercial RISC-V processors to chip designers.
An industry executive at the event Xuantie organized last week was the RISC-V, saying DeepSeek’s popularity could also boost RISC-V adoption, as the model of Chinese AI startups works efficiently on smaller-functioning chips.
During the event, Sun Haitao, manager of China Mobile System Integration, an ICT equipment provider, said small companies that want to use AI and DeepSeek may turn to chips designed with RISC-V architecture.
