Against China: USA takes aim at RISC-V
US lawmakers want to restrict China's access to RISC-V technology. However, this is difficult because the instruction set can be used without a license.
(Bild: raigvi / Shutterstock)
The trade conflict between the USA and China could spread to the open instruction set architecture RISC-V. Some US politicians apparently want to make China's development of processors and accelerators with RISC-V technology more difficult. As early as November 2023, 18 lawmakers from the House of Representatives and the Senate are said to have presented their request to the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, the Department of Commerce is apparently examining "potential risks" and possible "appropriate actions under the trade authorities [...] that could effectively address potential concerns." This was reported by the Reuters news agency, which says it has seen a letter from the Department of Commerce to US congressmen.
So far, the US has restricted China's access to processors, accelerators and other hardware developed with US technology. This primarily affects CPUs and GPUs from AMD and Nvidia. In addition, the Dutch manufacturer ASML is not allowed to sell modern lithography systems to Chinese chip manufacturers due to pressure from the USA. US design companies are not allowed to license their electronic design automation (EDA) tools to China.
Would it be possible to restrict an open architecture?
Restrictions on RISC-V are much more difficult because the instruction set architecture (ISA) is open source. It originated at the University of California, Berkeley, largely thanks to Krste Asanovic, Yunsup Lee, Andrew Waterman and David A. Patterson. However, the RISC-V Foundation, which was founded later, is now based in Switzerland.
The move took place at the end of 2019 – due to concerns about trade and export restrictions. The Foundation does not own the instruction set architecture. It merely drives further development without selling licenses. Anyone can adapt the RISC-V technology as they see fit and design chips. This makes it particularly interesting for China, as ARM is in foreign hands, there are no new licenses for x86 and SPARC or MIPS are hardly being continued. However, with the Loongson architecture derived from MIPS technology, China is also developing its own technology.
US authorities could only prohibit domestic companies from cooperating with Chinese companies and stop funding measures. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), for example, funded RISC-V early on via the Photonically Optimized Embedded Microprocessors (POEM) program.
SiFive's focus on China
SiFive is now one of the most important RISC-V companies – among other things, it develops CPU cores that chip designers can license for their processors. One of its licensees is DARPA. SiFive is also associated with the Chinese company StarFive and is explicitly targeting the Chinese market. This is where the US authorities could come in.
Most RISC-V products that are also of interest to private hobbyists, such as the VisionFive series of single-board computers,currently come from China. RISC-V technology is also used in industry. Western Digital, for example, uses RISC-V cores in its own SSD controllers. The European Processor Initiative (EPI) develops accelerator cards based on RISC-V.
(mma)
