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

reuters.com

21–30 of 126 posts

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

#21

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…

It's a spec, explicitly not owned by anyone (if it is it's by a Swiss based consortium) - the hardware people build from the spec may not be opensource (though many are)

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

#22
post #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…

[flagged]

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

#23
It's puzzling to read the statement that China "abuses" open technology not controlled by a country or a business entity. China's contribution to RISC-V, as well as that of other countries, is not restricted and can be freely used by anyone and any country.

If this kind of sabotage against open technologies by the US because the "CCP uses it" truly materializes, it would mark a significant decline in the US spirit, which is originally about confidence, openness, and entrepreneurship.

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

#24
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 need to find ways that work - Chinese (and American, or Russian or North Korean) vendors can publish their masks, their RTL, if they want to be trusted.

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

#25
post #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.

I've looked into the "why" of that, since I, too, wondered why a design that comes from the University of Berkeley (the home of BSD) lives there: international legal protection and tax reasons.

That said, because of that, you could also say it belongs to the entire world, equally, and I would be happy with that description as well; but politicians don't really understand those words, and only think in terms of tribal football.

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

#26
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 .

Oh please, what is Intel Management Engine and AMD Platform Security Processor? that is the most obvious and blatant backdoor in every Intel/AMD chip there is.

I am tired as someone from a third country to get "national security" be used as an excuse to fight a trade war. Every single electronic is way more expensive as a result, damaging peoples livelihoods because we want to maintain our ridiculous huge profit margin per sale.

Just look at the new Iphone, it has $35 of titanium.

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

#27

> "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…

the quote sounds like it came from someone who didn't really fully grasp the phrase and the implications of what 'export control' might look like in reference to open-source.

it's rich too listening to a senator talking as if the concept of open-source blindsided them given that the attention of Washington has been the very thing the various OSS groups having been working towards since forever.

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

#29

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

ICANN's official position is "politics has no place in ICANN".

A country TLD belongs to that country, period. As long as that country exists (or has historically existed during the timeframe of TLD ownership, in the cases of legacy TLDs such as .s(oviet)u(nion)), they have exclusive use and control of it.

Yes, that even means if the Internet existed in the 1930s, some-anti-jew-website.gov.de could legally and rightfully exist as a registered domain under the German TLD, and not be in violation of ICANN rules, no matter how disgusting, wrong, and harmful that website is.

It is up to the registry owner of that TLD to enforce laws relevant to their locality and the Internet. To continue with the example, today's .de, obviously, would not allow such a domain to be registered, especially not from their own government, and also not be in violation of ICANN rules to enforce that.

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