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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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I really hope that Europe will participate in that endeavor. Everyone can benefit from a more open source platform.
RISC-V lacks software? I guess it depends what software you want. Pretty much everything on your typical Linux distro runs on it already (including the Linux kernel itself of course). GCC and Clang target RISC-V. QEMU supports it.
A lot of software even has advanced assembly optimization for RISC-V already. Fedora just added it as an official architecture. I think Chimera Linux already supports it and that distro is still in beta.
Even a few hobby projects support RISC-V, like Haiku.
I assume the article means that Windows does not support it yet. I mean, it barely supports ARM. In a few months, macOS will not even support Intel.
RISC-V chips are still slow but catching up. RISC-V is coming. Why license deigns off ARM when you can choose from 20 different RISC-V designers. And if you are going to design your own CPU, do you want ARM claiming ownership over your creations? Look at what they tried to do to Qualcomm and their X Elite business. And at the low-end, there are not only no ISA license fees but there are already Open Source hardware designs available. There will be more. So, either a design head-start or more licensing savings.
If I was starting a chip project today, I would 100% be RISC-V based.
In a few months, macOS will not even support Intel.
That’s a bold statement.
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).
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.
I’m all for more development into this architecture. It means lower overhead costs and better control over security for open source projects.