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

reuters.com

11–20 of 126 posts

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

#11
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.

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

#12
post #6

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

> 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 .

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.

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

#13
> "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.

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

#14
> "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

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

#15
post #6

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

> 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 .

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.

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

#16

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

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

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

#18
post #4

What is next? Linux? GitHub? Wikipedia? Sheer f**g hubris.

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.

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

#19
post #6

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

> 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 .

> 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

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

#20

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…

>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.

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