RISC-V chip technology is a new chapter in the battle between the US and China – 10/06/2023 – Tech

In a new front in the technology war between the United States and China, US President Joe Biden’s administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to restrict US companies from working on a freely available and widely used chip technology. in China — a move that could change the way the global technology sector collaborates across borders.

The issue is RISC-V, an open source technology that competes with technology from British semiconductor and software design company Arm. RISC-V can be used as an essential ingredient for anything from a smartphone chip to advanced processors for artificial intelligence.

Some lawmakers — including two Republican House of Representatives committee chairmen, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner — are calling on the Biden administration to take action on RISC-V, citing national security reasons.

Lawmakers expressed concern that Beijing is exploiting a culture of open collaboration among U.S. companies to promote its own semiconductor industry, which could erode the United States’ current leadership in the chip sector and help China modernize its military. .

Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said in a note to Reuters that the Commerce Department needs to “require that any U.S. person or company receive an export license before engaging with PRC entities (People’s Republic of China) on RISC-V technology”.

These calls to regulate RISC-V are the latest in the battle between the United States and China over chip technology, which intensified last year with sweeping export restrictions that the Biden administration has told China it will update this month. .

“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 ​​artificial intelligence — and a drastic paradigm shift is necessary,” Warner said in a statement to Reuters.

RISC-V is overseen by a Swiss-based nonprofit foundation that coordinates efforts among for-profit companies to develop the technology.

RISC-V technology came from the laboratories at the University of California, Berkeley, and later benefited from funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its creators compared it to Ethernet, USB and even the Internet, which are freely available and rely on contributions from around the world to make innovation faster and cheaper.

Technology used by Huawei

Executives at China’s Huawei have embraced RISC-V as a pillar of the country’s progress in developing its own chips. But the United States and its allies have also embraced the technology, with chip giant Qualcomm working with a group of European auto companies on RISC-V chips and Alphabet’s Google saying it will make Android, the most popular mobile operating system. in the world, run on RISC-V chips.

Qualcomm declined to comment. Its executives said in August that they believe RISC-V will accelerate chip innovation and transform the technology sector.

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

If the Biden administration regulates U.S. companies’ participation in the Switzerland-based foundation in the way lawmakers are seeking, the move could complicate how U.S. and Chinese companies work together on open technical standards. It could also create obstacles for China’s quest for chip self-sufficiency, as well as efforts by the United States and Europe to create cheaper, more versatile chips.

Jack Kang, vice president of business development at SiFive, a startup that uses RISC-V, said potential restrictions on companies regarding the technology will be a “tremendous tragedy.”

“It would be like banning us from working on the Internet,” Kang said. “It will be a huge mistake in terms of technology, leadership, innovation, companies and jobs that are being created.”