RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

Wikipedia is already quite a bit of a battleground for a wide variety of interests. Linux seems like the obvious path to avoiding depending on and trusting Microsoft, although I don't know if China cares that much right now.

pantalaimon• 3 years ago

Linux sees a lot of contributions from China (Loongson, Huawei, many smaller vendors) and especially Loongson has gotten pretty good with working with upstream to get their architecture (LoongArch) into GCC, binutils, libc …

WanderPanda• 3 years ago

Tell them how china is using .cn! They didn’t even pull that trigger in case of .ru.

ICANN is the space laser that I hope they never discover they have

Taniwha6• 3 years ago

Net is designed to route around nuclear war, I'm sure we can all work together and route around the US congress

grotorea3• 3 years ago

I don't know about China but Russia explicitly plans to keep its internet working even if the cables are cut at the border.

DiabloD33• 3 years ago

ICANN's official position is "politics has no place in ICANN".

A country TLD belongs to that country, period. As long as that country exists (or has historically existed during the timeframe of TLD ownership, in the cases of legacy TLDs such as .s(oviet)u(nion)), they have exclusive use and control of it.

Yes, that even means if the Internet existed in the 1930s, some-anti-jew-website.gov.de could legally and rightfully exist as a registered domain under the German TLD, and not be in violation of ICANN rules, no matter how disgusting, wrong, and harmful that website is.

It is up to the registry owner of that TLD to enforce laws relevant to their locality and the Internet. To continue with the example, today's .de, obviously, would not allow such a domain to be registered, especially not from their own government, and also not be in violation of ICANN rules to enforce that.

Taniwha6• 3 years ago

RISC-V is all about not bowing down to one company, or one country - cheaper better chips from China are just as good as cheaper better chips from the USA or Europe - and competition, that great capitalist American institution, is a good thing here - we don't need any archaic old cold warriors messing with our markets

deadmutex• 3 years ago

cheaper better chips from China are just as good as cheaper better chips from the USA or Europe

This may be a bit naive. How do you make sure that there are no intentional security issues / backdoors in Chips from a vendor?

An interesting clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXxgb9N_qI .

smoldesu2• 3 years ago

Most of the chips I've seen China clone are the cheap microcontrollers that couldn't really run malware if it tried. STM32s and down have been cloned sans-licensing for over a decade now, while something like RISC-V would enable vendors worldwide to compete with Chinese knock-offs legally. Bringing the barrier of IP down benefits everyone except the tax-collectors for the current IP.

fuoqi3• 3 years ago

You can't, in the same way as with x86 and ARMs widely used today. Frankly, most people simply do not care. They gladly accept shit like Intel ME, so it's a lost battle.

At least, with RISC-V there is a chance we will get full stack open hardware implementations. They likely will be far from the cutting edge, but sufficient for many applications.

mvncleaninst2• 3 years ago

This may be a bit naive. How do you make sure that there are no intentional security issues / backdoors in Chips from a vendor?

Seems like you're confusing designs (that is to say, speech) and actual manufactured chips, the two are not the same

Taniwha6• 3 years ago

You need to find ways that work - Chinese (and American, or Russian or North Korean) vendors can publish their masks, their RTL, if they want to be trusted.

dev1ycan• 3 years ago

Oh please, what is Intel Management Engine and AMD Platform Security Processor? that is the most obvious and blatant backdoor in every Intel/AMD chip there is.

I am tired as someone from a third country to get "national security" be used as an excuse to fight a trade war. Every single electronic is way more expensive as a result, damaging peoples livelihoods because we want to maintain our ridiculous huge profit margin per sale.

Just look at the new Iphone, it has $35 of titanium.

DiogenesKynikos• 3 years ago

Watching that clip, it is hilarious how Zuckerberg has pivoted over the years.

In 2015, when Zuckerberg still had hope that Facebook would be allowed to operate in China, Zuckerberg asked Xi Jinping to name his baby.[0] Xi, probably taken aback by the sheer level of sycophancy, turned Zuckerberg down: "Too much responsibility."

Now, Zuckerberg has gone entirely the opposite direction, denouncing the Chinese government, pushing for a TikTok ban, and so on.

0. https://youtu.be/S20BoxH8W9g?si=X1hAG12pquY-Y_i7

Barrin922• 3 years ago

When I was working in China one of the most common readings of Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem was to take the Trisolarans as a stand-in for the US, and it doesn't seem too far off the mark with proposals like this.

Trying to intefere with the development of open source hardware isn't just regulating products any more, that's just throwing a wrench into the scientific process.

thrtythreeforty2• 3 years ago

This is the kind of perspective I don't hear from within the US. How far does the metaphor go? Is it just the meddling, superiority complex, and halting of technological advance? Or do other Trisolaran traits such as inability to lie also have an analogue?

(I kind of doubt it goes too deep. Liu is great at concepts but the worldbuilding was not super in depth.)

Barrin922• 3 years ago

Is it just the meddling, superiority complex, and halting of technological advance?

For the most part it wasn't much more deep than that, although one more subtle point was that there were also a lot of comparisons between the chaotic and unstable climate of Trisolaris due to its multiple suns and the perceived political / cultural disorder and division in the US, in contrast to the stable climate of Earth.

DiabloD33• 3 years ago

RISC-V is an American made, American owned design that just happens to be open source hardware friendly.

Reuters is acting like this is some sort of a) amazing new technology that isn't just the newest iteration of a 30 year old architecture family, b) owned and created by China, and c) this isn't just some ploy by the Republicans to harm American interests abroad to protect their own private investments.

What a crap article.

fuoqi3• 3 years ago

American made

While it indeed has American roots and a huge amount of development is done today by American citizens, various people and companies from China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and many European countries have significant contributions as well.

American owned design

Nope. It's "owned" by the RISC-V International Association registered in Switzerland.

DiabloD33• 3 years ago

I've looked into the "why" of that, since I, too, wondered why a design that comes from the University of Berkeley (the home of BSD) lives there: international legal protection and tax reasons.

That said, because of that, you could also say it belongs to the entire world, equally, and I would be happy with that description as well; but politicians don't really understand those words, and only think in terms of tribal football.

Taniwha6• 3 years ago

It's a spec, explicitly not owned by anyone (if it is it's by a Swiss based consortium) - the hardware people build from the spec may not be opensource (though many are)

sigzero• 3 years ago

It's not just Republicans, it's Democrats as well. Warner is a Democrat.

neilv2• 3 years ago

"require any American person or company to receive an export license prior to engaging with PRC (People's Republic of China) entities on RISC-V technology."

How would that end up working?

I've seen situations in which exports restrictions came up, and which resulted in design or manufacturing being restructured, so that more work was shifted to be done in the restricted country. Which also meant that more know-how was developed in the restricted country. Which I don't think was the (ostensible) intended outcome. It might've had short-term benefits for some companies, though.

oefrha• 3 years ago

What the hell does that even mean for open source? Need an export license to run a frigging GitHub project if it has anything to do with RISC-V at all? Does a compiler with a RISC-V target count? Projects with RISC-V builds?

numpad0• 3 years ago

Yes to all, technically. It won't matter usually, but technically. Weapons export controls are getting absurd that buying Chinese to get around is totally an option now.

Like, seen those silver tablet thing for screening COVID in visitors? They are ALL designed and built by Chinese companies using really good and completely unlocked Chinese thermal cameras, because, access to Western versions of such high technology could "pose threat" to the Western world and is therefore severely restricted.

And they ALL record every faces it's seen, which are often not GUI discoverable nor exportable but extractable by sshing into, because of course they do and they are.

And that is what export control schemes are doing.

thrtythreeforty2• 3 years ago

If you set aside the absurdity of applying it to RISC-V for a second, yes, that is exactly what export control means. Any such regulated technology can't be exported (for a very well defined and strict definition of "exported"). Posting it on GitHub definitely counts as an export controls violation.

yafbum2• 3 years ago

more work was shifted to be done in the restricted country

Yes and it cost them more overall. People who design sanctions know well that they provide a powerful incentive to the development of indigenous alternatives in the target country. The calculus is that on balance, it is more desirable to force the target country to waste their resources on catching up (or on circumventing sanctions). The point is to make things more expensive.

neilv2• 3 years ago

In practice, how much is it this calculus, and how much is it lobbyists for companies with fairly short-term commercial goals?

mvncleaninst2• 3 years ago

"I fear that our export-control laws are not equipped to deal with the challenge of open-source software - whether in advanced semiconductor designs like RISC-V or in the area of AI - and a dramatic paradigm shift is needed," Warner said in a statement to Reuters.

This is clearly an attack on open source. Seems incredibly odd that they use the word "export" to refer to information (that is to say: speech)

I really wonder which corporations are lobbying for this stupidity, I'd like to hear some fucking names so I can boycott them

serf• 3 years ago

the quote sounds like it came from someone who didn't really fully grasp the phrase and the implications of what 'export control' might look like in reference to open-source.

it's rich too listening to a senator talking as if the concept of open-source blindsided them given that the attention of Washington has been the very thing the various OSS groups having been working towards since forever.

sangnoir• 3 years ago

the quote sounds like it came from someone who didn't really fully grasp the phrase and the implications of what 'export control' might look like in reference to open-source.

Or didn't study recent history., the export control on strong encryption meant that American contributors would follow the letter of the law, and others outside of the US - eg Canadians for BouncyCastle[1] - would freely provide the missing illegal-to-export functionality to the rest of the world.

1. If memory serves, an American cryptographer once crossed into Canada to perform a 'forbidden commit'. The functionality technically wasn't an export of the US

sneak3• 3 years ago

They’ve done this before, famously with encryption software.

prz and djb did great work to stop it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States

After four years and one regulatory change, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional.

FWIW, I imagine in 4-5 years this “battle” will pretty much already be decided wrt chipmaking in China.

samtheprogram• 3 years ago

FWIW, I imagine in 4-5 years this “battle” will pretty much already be decided wrt chipmaking in China.

If I'm understanding you correctly...

It's not that easy for China (or the US) to spin up their own fabs, particularly ones that compete to those in Taiwan. Even with some expertise and fat pockets, you might not get the same results. It's a lot of trial and error and improving yield for small processes to the point where it's economical.

On top of that, the cutting edge is already developing in Taiwan (i.e. next gen fabs).

That's why Taiwan is such a coveted area for the PRC (and the US) -- besides the traditional political issues regarding their exodus from mainland China.

galangalalgol• 3 years ago

Didn't the us government recently force krakenSDR to pull down their passive radar software under these laws? That would seem to violate precedent.

igravious2• 3 years ago

FWIW, I imagine in 4-5 years this “battle” will pretty much already be decided wrt chipmaking in China.

Ay, for sure by 2030 at current rates of development

grotorea3• 3 years ago

Is it just me or is this strong cryptography export control again?

WiSaGaN• 3 years ago

It's puzzling to read the statement that China "abuses" open technology not controlled by a country or a business entity. China's contribution to RISC-V, as well as that of other countries, is not restricted and can be freely used by anyone and any country.

If this kind of sabotage against open technologies by the US because the "CCP uses it" truly materializes, it would mark a significant decline in the US spirit, which is originally about confidence, openness, and entrepreneurship.

juunpp4• 3 years ago

This whole article is US government propaganda. Just look how they need to prepend "Communist" to "China" to make a point (not).

bhouston• 3 years ago

The lawmakers raising this topic with Biden are being lobbied in part by ARM? Probably. RISC-V is mostly a threat to ARM more than anyone else.

quantum_state• 3 years ago

Once the guys learn general relativity is used by GPS, they may just want to ban that … neither the US nor the world can afford this type of stupidity …

somsak2• 3 years ago

GPS is US government invented, owned, and operated. Reagan made it free for use by anyone.

Hizonner• 3 years ago

Well, fuck.

another_story• 3 years ago

I can't help but think this tech war will be a positive for most of us. Both China and the US seem to think they need a rival, and if they want to do it over chips I think it can only spur on innovation in open source hardware.

whatever1• 3 years ago

I can see both of the sides of the argument.

It seems that we use US funding to help everyone circumvent ARM and x86.

The problem is that US enemies are also recipients of the US technology contributions.

But what is the alternative? Stop publishing everything ?

miohtama• 3 years ago

Exactly. You make everything illegal or “regulated” (practically banned). The EU is already leading the way and has touched machine learning, end-to-end capable encryption and software distribution in various of its regulation directives.

- Communications (every chat software must come with spyware installed)

- AI (machine learning is too scary and authors say it will kill mankind, worse than a climate change)

- RISC-V (terrorists can use it in missiles)

- Open source (terrorists can run missiles and super computers with Linux)

- Software distribution (either because of communications or AI)

- Cryptocurrency wallets (interacting with a software wallet you wrote yourself makes your a suspicious and banks will deplatform you on the basis of anti-money laundering)

You need to remember that end-to-end encryption exporting was illegal in the US until 90s. Now when Trump has stacked supreme court with his own sockpuppets they may want to reverse any decision regarding this like they did with abortion.

omnimus• 3 years ago

I just will say regulation doesnt equal ban. And that i am pretty sure EU didnt ban open source, RISC-V, encryption or software distribution. Some EU member states politicians have stupid ideas about communications/encryption so they push proposals but these are also often corporate lobby to gain more control over the networks. And afaik nothing has passed into actual law.

If anything EU has been generaly aiming their regulations at the american big tech which many see as vultures feeding on users and most importantly avoiding taxes.

panick21_2• 3 years ago

China and companies from China have done a lot of work on RISC-V. So the US is also recipient of China technology.

Its kind of the point of open source.

thayne• 3 years ago

I suspect (but have no concrete evidence) that the real motivation behind this is that one or more companies feel threatened by risc-v, and hope that they by hindering collaboration, they can hobble their competitors on both sides of the ocean.

in_excess2• 3 years ago

Marco Rubio, the senator pushing for this, received 250k from SoftBank in 2022.

trealira2• 3 years ago

I'm sorry, I'm not following. What does receiving money from SoftBank in particular imply?

sva_• 3 years ago

It seems like he received $14100

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/softbank-corp/recipients?id...

w1nst0nsm1th• 3 years ago

I suspect too.

It comes 1 week after ARM IPO.

skybrian• 3 years ago

I’m wondering which technology they mean? It doesn’t seem to be in the article.

Surely not RISC-V instruction formats? That’s just the API. It doesn’t seem like the hard part of making a chip?

justinclift• 3 years ago

From the article:

    Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House select committee on China,
    said in a statement to Reuters that the Commerce Department needs to "require any
    American person or company to receive an export license prior to engaging with PRC
    (People's Republic of China) entities on RISC-V technology."

imtringued2• 3 years ago

That’s just the API. It doesn’t seem like the hard part of making a chip?

When I look at the number of x86 competitors, I'm pretty sure that is the hardest part by far...

photonbeam• 3 years ago

Seems like the ARM lobbyists are making moves

petre• 3 years ago

ARM is a company from the UK, so we'd hear this from the UK government if the ARM lobbists were making moves. It's probably Intel or just dumb senators who heard about RISC-V but not MIPS which was also open sourced.

blackoil2• 3 years ago

Lobbying will be done where you'll get max bang for buck.

in_excess2• 3 years ago

Rubio received 250k from SoftBank last year.

rkagerer• 3 years ago

I'm glad I don't see a single comment here supporting this nonsense. I hope some of the intelligence and understanding from this community permeates to the general public should these morons attempt to proceed with their ill-conceived plan.

aiunboxed2• 3 years ago

What is the incentive for big giants like Intel, Qualcomm, and Nvidia to adopt RISC-V? Isn't their moat their in-house chips?

I guess it is more about companies which don't have their own proprietary chips or companies in developing nations.

maven29• 3 years ago

Really, it's for anyone who's core competency isn't selling general-purpose compute, but will have to design their own ASICs anyway.

For example, when WD open-sourced their SweRV cores in 2019, they also committed to shipping 1 billion copies of the particular design. Beyond just the software ecosystem, they might be looking at incentivizing IP vendors to contribute to a rich ecosystem of interconnects, peripherals, and design/verification software.

phkahler• 3 years ago

> What is the incentive for big giants like Intel, Qualcomm, and Nvidia to adopt RISC-V? Isn't their moat their in-house chips?

Every chip company other than Intel and AMD licenses designs or ISA from ARM. Risc-V has no licensing fees if you design your own, and there are even free designs out there.

It's not feasible to create your own instruction set. You also have to build a whole bunch of software infrastructure for it and convince people to use it and port apps to it. Intel doesn't license x86. ARM costs money, and RISC-V is an open standard that was competently designed by some very smart people. It is also the 3rd most well supported ISA from a software point of view.

aiunboxed2• 3 years ago

Understood now it makes sense.

panick21_2• 3 years ago

It is feasible to have your own instruction set. Many companies have done it, its just a pretty bad idea and everybody that has done it wants to stop doing it.

tritiy• 3 years ago

"The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is abusing RISC-V to get around U.S. dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips."

In other words

"We should be the best .. they should not be allowed to be the best!"

joshbaptiste• 3 years ago

When the USA feels threatened by a rising power the answer is usually to cripple the rise rather than directly compete

Incipient• 3 years ago

Seems pretty universal throughout history, and no different with even China themselves. If a country feels threatened, they retaliate/seek to block it.

Our PM asked for an inquiry into the origins of covid, and China banned our beef, wine, barley, and coal imports.

There was no inquiry. Seems China won that one.

nojvek• 3 years ago

What happened to “May the best player win”?

The US can throw a fit, but technology is inherently human and RISC-V is an open instruction format.

Sooner or later China will get a powerful working chip. Not in the best interest of US to be an enemy of a billion person nation. Esp the nation that is the world’s factory.

When China couldn’t supply PPP gear in Covid, 100s of thousands died.

I’d rather wish our Senators work on bringing manufacturing back to US instead of playing no-trade games.

wyuenho4• 3 years ago

What happened to the level playing field? China doesn't invest and open source anything, why should the US subsidize their technological advancement?

imtringued2• 3 years ago

The C910 is one of the most popular RISC-V processor designs and it is open source and from China.

est2• 3 years ago

China doesn't invest and open source anything

I actually wrote a blog on that (2019)

https://blog.est.im/201906/stdout-003

blacklightpy4• 3 years ago

Literally every open source RISC-V Chip, SoC and Board I know are Chinese, aside from SiFive. Alibaba T-Head Xuantie C9-series and E9-series CPU cores, StarFive JH7110 SoC, Alibaba T-Head TH1520 SoC, SOPHON SG2042 SoC, StarFive JH8100 SoC (TBA), several RISC-V boards from Milk-V, BananaPi and SiPeed which are state of the art RISC-V boards.

I think US are the ones doing less.

Edit: Just realized SiFive was US based, not Chinese, so edited it out.

blacklightpy4• 3 years ago

And even if you hate China, it does not justify the opposition to using an open source ISA as a whole. It benefits everyone around the globe, and USA is not a special country. Others can use the ISA just the same, and it's better for them to do so.

You guys thinking in terms of countries is just as big of a problem, but again I don't have the time for that philosophy.

RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war

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