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Chinese government shifts focus from x86 and Arm CPUs, promoting the adoption of RISC-V chips
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this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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China moving to RISC-V could be a way to reduce their reliance on Windows and promote Linux (probably a linux distro like Deepin for consumers). They are still quite reliant on Windows in the consumer market (if Steam is any indication).
Anti Commercial-AI license
RISC-V allows them to stop relying on western controlled technology in general. ARM cannot pull the rug out from their mobile ecosystem if they are RISC-V based. Beyond even Linux, they have their own mobile operating systems (eg. HarmonyOS).
If China builds AI capable edge or server hardware based on RISC-V, it is hard for the west to do anything about it.
Not only that but, if China wants to disrupt a western market, their future toolkit will include the ability to release Open Source RISC-V hardware targeting specific use cases.
Finally, if they have their own ecosystem, they could choose to share it with other nations facing sanctions by the west, further undermining the efforts of their adversaries.
Like RISC-V, China currently lags the state-of-the-art. They too are catching up though and sometimes faster than they were expected to.