U.S. and Chinese companies are not letting increased tensions between Washington and Beijing stop them from working together on RISC-V, the open instruction-set architecture that is emerging as an alternative to proprietary CPU architectures such as Arm and x86.
MIPS, the U.S. processor intellectual-property company acquired by GlobalFoundries last year, has a particularly close relationship with Chinese companies on RISC-V standardization, according to Yankin Tanurhan, MIPS chief technology officer.
Speaking at a media briefing in Shanghai last month, Tanurhan said MIPS was working “very closely” with Chinese partners as the industry develops common RISC-V standards.
The cooperation illustrates an important distinction in the semiconductor industry: while U.S. export controls increasingly restrict China’s access to advanced chips, manufacturing equipment and other technologies, open standards such as RISC-V remain a relatively accessible area for collaboration.
RISC-V is not a chip technology itself but an instruction set architecture, or ISA, that defines the basic commands a processor understands. Unlike x86 and Arm, RISC-V is openly available and can be implemented by companies without obtaining a proprietary ISA license.
As a result, that openness has made RISC-V increasingly attractive to Chinese chip developers seeking to reduce dependence on foreign technology.
The architecture initially gained traction in embedded systems, microcontrollers, industrial equipment and automotive applications. It is now moving into more demanding segments, including artificial intelligence, robotics, physical AI, and data center computing.
Tanurhan said the organization is working to standardize applications that range from AI and microcontrollers to data center servers. The goal is to create common specifications that allow processors and software developed by different companies to work within the same broader ecosystem.
This is very important to China. Its latest five-year plan for the electronics and information-technology industry specifically identifies RISC-V as an area for development as the country attempts to reduce reliance on Western technologies. Ironic, since RISC-V is also a Western technology.
The continuing involvement of U.S. companies demonstrates why RISC-V occupies a distinctive position in the semiconductor geopolitical landscape. Washington and Beijing remain fierce competitors in advanced computing and AI, but both sides have an interest in a common processor architecture that can support a broad international software and hardware ecosystem.
For China, as RISC-V moves beyond traditional embedded applications, it creates an opportunity to develop processors around an architecture that is not controlled by a U.S. company. For international chip companies, RISC-V offers the possibility of participating in a common ecosystem without being tied to a single proprietary CPU architecture.
