China to promote open-source RISC-V chips, boosting domestic chip industry

China will release instructions encouraging the use of open-source RISC-V processors countrywide for the first time, according to two persons briefed on the topic. This comes as Beijing aims to reduce reliance on Western-owned technology.

The policy guideline on increasing the usage of RISC-V processors might be announced as early as this month, but the exact timing may vary, according to the sources.

Eight government departments, including China’s Cyberspace Administration, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, and China National Intellectual Property Administration, are collaborating to develop the document.

The sources declined to be named as the policy discussions were still under way. The four ministries did not respond to requests for comment.

RISC-V is a open-source technology that is used to design a range of less-sophisticated chips, from those in smartphones to CPUs for artificial intelligence servers.

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It competes globally with proprietary and more commonly used chip architecture technology including x86, dominated by U.S. firms Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, and Arm, developed by SoftBank Group-owned Arm Holdings.

In  China, state entities and research institutes have eagerly embraced RISC-V in recent years, seeing it as geopolitically neutral. Chinese chip designers are attracted by its lower costs, but the government has yet to mention it in policy.

Its widening use in the country has been greeted warily in the United States, as friction between Washington and Beijing grow - especially over technology.

In 2023, Reuters reported that some U.S. lawmakers were putting pressure on the Biden administration to restrict American companies from working on the technology over concerns that Beijing was exploiting its open-source nature to advance its own semiconductor industry.

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China’s largest for-profit RISC-V intellectual property providers include Alibaba’s XuanTie and startup Nuclei System Technology, which sell commercial RISC-V processors to chip designers.

Industry executives at a event focused on RISC-V that was organised by XuanTie last week said the popularity of DeepSeek could also boost adoption of RISC-V, as the Chinese AI startup’s models run efficiently on less-powerful chips.

Smaller companies that want to use AI and DeepSeek could turn to chips designed with RISC-V’s architecture, said Sun Haitao, a manager at  China  Mobile System Integration, an ICT equipment provider during the event.

“Even if a RISC-V solution priced at 10 million yuan might only reach about 30% of the level of NVIDIA or Huawei, buying three sets means the overall cost might still be lower,” he said. “I think this is a breakthrough point.”