According to them, the US Department of Commerce is investigating the “risks” of China’s approach to RISC-V technology, free, open chip manufacturing and with royalty-free usage, which is increasingly important in the technology industry.

RISC-V is the most promising project in the search for what they call an Open Source processor. Or what is the same thing, a new open source chip design based on the RISC architecture that offers a more economical (and open) way to manufacture semiconductors for today’s applications and all the new technologies that have come (and are yet to come). in autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, virtual reality or data centers.

It originated at the University of California, Berkeley, and today is in the hands of a foundation based in Switzerland, where it moved from the United States in 2019 for what they said. “free yourself from the clutches of Donald Trump”. It should be noted that among the foundation’s hundreds of companies, entities and organizations there are many companies outside the United States, such as the European chip manufacturer NXP Semiconductors, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group or Huawei Technologies.

RISC-V, the huge future that some want to control

US lawmakers have long trying to control what will be a consistent alternative to the current platforms, x86 and ARM. Although the platform is not currently popular in mainstream computing products, the standard has very high potential for most processor use cases. And they want to limit China’s access:

“CCP (Chinese Communist Party) abuses RISC-V to bypass US dominance of intellectual property needed to design chips”assured the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the House of Representatives in his first attack China’s approach to RISC-V. 18 US lawmakers from both houses of Congress pressured the Biden administration to adopt plans to prevent China “managed to become dominant in RISC-V technology and use that dominance to the detriment of the national and economic security of the United States”. This is not the first time, as we said, to attempts at a blockade that have already appeared in the Trump era.

The arguments are the same and so are the risks.. The Commerce Department also noted that it will have to tread carefully to avoid harming US companies that are part of international groups working on RISC-V technology. Previous controls on the transfer of 5G technology to China created obstacles for those companies working in international standards bodies in which China also participated, threatening US leadership in the field.

In addition, RISC-V International executive management recalled the value of open standards without barriers: “RISC-V is an open standard and includes significant contributions from around the world. As a global standard, RISC-V is not controlled by any company or country.. The change of headquarters of the RISC-V Foundation five years ago was done precisely to avoid the control of any country and to preserve its identity: free, open chip production without paying license fees.