China Ready To Release Policy To Encourage National Use Of RISC-V Chips

RISC-V is an open-source technology used in the design of various chips (photo; x @smartecocity)

JAKARTA The Chinese government plans to issue policy guidelines to encourage the national use of the RISC-V open-source chip. This was revealed by two sources familiar with this information. This step is part of Beijing's efforts to reduce dependence on Western company-owned technology.

According to the source, this policy could be announced as soon as this month, although the exact date could still change. This policy guide is being drafted by eight government agencies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and China's National Intellectual Property Administration.

This news immediately impacted the shares of Chinese chip companies. The CSI All-Share Semiconductor Products and Equipment index reversed from initial losses and rose to 2.5% in afternoon trade. Veri Silicon shares jumped 10%, while ASR Microelectronics, Shanghai Anlogic Infotech, and 3Peak recorded an increase of between 8.6% to 15.4%.

RISC-V is an open-source technology used in the design of various chips, ranging from smartphones to processors for artificial intelligence (AI). This technology competes with a proprietary chip architecture such as x86, which is controlled by US companies Intel and AMD, as well as Arm, developed by SoftBank Group's Arm Holdings.

In China, various state research institutions and entities are increasingly interested in RISC-V, seeing it as geopolitical neutral technology. Chip designers also like this technology because it costs less, although until now the government has not officially included it in national policy.

However, the increasing adoption of RISC-V in China raises concerns in the United States. In 2023, some US lawmakers pressured the Joe Biden administration to limit US companies from cooperating with this technology. They fear that China will take advantage of the open-source nature of RISC-V to strengthen its own semiconductor industry.

In China, some of the largest Intellectual Property (IP) providers RISC-V include Alibaba's XuanTie and Nuclear System Technology startup, which sell RISC-V-based processors to chip designers.

The popularity of RISC-V is also expected to increase with the development of DeepSek, a Chinese AI startup. According to industry executives, DeepSek's AI model can run efficiently on chip with lower computing power.

Sun Haidao, a manager at China Mobile System Integration, said that small companies that want to use AI and DeepSek can choose RISC-V-based chips because they are more affordable.

"If one RISC-V solution costs 10 million yuan, it only reaches 30% of the performance of the NVIDIA or Huawei chips, buying three sets remains more overall efficient," he said at an event related to RISC-V last week.

China's move to push RISC-V could be a major strategy to reduce dependence on Western technology amid trade tensions and competition in the global semiconductor industry.