Exclusive-China to publish policy to boost RISC-V chip use nationwide - sources

By Che Pan and Brenda Goh

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China plans to contented guidance to promote the usage of open-source RISC-V chips nationwide for the archetypal time, 2 sources briefed connected the substance said, arsenic Beijing accelerates efforts to curb the country's dependence connected Western-owned technology.

The argumentation guidance connected boosting the usage of RISC-V chips could beryllium released arsenic soon arsenic this month, though the last day could change, the sources said.

It is being drafted jointly by 8 authorities bodies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the China National Intellectual Property Administration, they added.

The sources declined to beryllium named arsenic the argumentation discussions were inactive nether way. The 4 ministries did not respond to requests for comment.

RISC-V is simply a open-source exertion that is utilized to plan a scope of less-sophisticated chips, from those successful smartphones to CPUs for artificial quality servers.

It competes globally with proprietary and much commonly utilized spot architecture exertion including x86, dominated by U.S. firms Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, and Arm, developed by SoftBank Group-owned Arm Holdings.

In China, authorities entities and probe institutes person eagerly embraced RISC-V successful caller years, seeing it arsenic geopolitically neutral. Chinese spot designers are attracted by its little costs, but the authorities has yet to notation it successful policy.

Its widening usage successful the state has been greeted warily successful the United States, arsenic friction betwixt Washington and Beijing turn - particularly implicit technology.

In 2023, Reuters reported that immoderate U.S. lawmakers were putting unit connected the Biden medication to restrict American companies from moving connected the exertion implicit concerns that Beijing was exploiting its open-source quality to beforehand its ain semiconductor industry.

China's largest for-profit RISC-V intelligence spot providers see Alibaba's XuanTie and startup Nuclei System Technology, which merchantability commercialized RISC-V processors to spot designers.

Industry executives astatine a lawsuit focused connected RISC-V that was organised by XuanTie past week said the popularity of DeepSeek could besides boost adoption of RISC-V, arsenic the Chinese AI startup's models tally efficiently connected less-powerful chips.

Smaller companies that privation to usage AI and DeepSeek could crook to chips designed with RISC-V's architecture, said Sun Haitao, a manager astatine China Mobile System Integration, an ICT instrumentality supplier during the event.