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RISC-V chip technology emerges as new battleground in US-China tech war
- blackoil 3y agoTell them how China is using github, stackoverflow and Linux.
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- AnthonyMouse 3y agoTell them how China is using SMS.
- rubatuga 3y agoHonestly if I get better chips I have no problems with RISC-V
- juunpp 3y agoWhat do you know, they might not even be backdoored.
- Taniwha 3y agoHow do you tell US chips are not backdoored?
- juunpp 3y agoI'm saying the opposite.
- Taniwha 3y agoI know, but there's certainly bits of US CPUs that are not publicly discoverable - and past pressure from US government agencies for backdoors into systems Ideally we should be building systems that are open enough to be able to tell these things, certainly if we want to trust a system then all the boot code, from the first instruction should be public - whether it's built in China or the US
- juunpp 3y agoThat's what I was alluding to in the first place.
- fuoqi 3y agoWhat is next? Linux? GitHub? Wikipedia? Sheer f**g hubris.
- grotorea 3y agoWikipedia 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.
- pantalaimon 3y agoLinux sees a lot of contributions from China (Loongson, Huawei, many smaller vendors) and especially Loongson has gotten pretty good with working with upstream to get their architecture (LoongArch) into GCC, binutils, libc …
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- WanderPanda 3y agoTell 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
- Taniwha 3y agoNet is designed to route around nuclear war, I'm sure we can all work together and route around the US congress
- grotorea 3y agoI don't know about China but Russia explicitly plans to keep its internet working even if the cables are cut at the border.
- DiabloD3 3y agoICANN'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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- Taniwha 3y agoRISC-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
- deadmutex 3y ago> 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXxgb9N_qI .
- smoldesu 3y agoMost 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.
- fuoqi 3y agoYou 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.
- mvncleaninst 3y ago> 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
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- Barrin92 3y agoWhen I was working in China one of the most common readings of Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem was to take the Trisolarans as a stand-in for the US, and it doesn't seem too far off the mark with proposals like this. Trying to intefere with the development of open source hardware isn't just regulating products any more, that's just throwing a wrench into the scientific process.
- thrtythreeforty 3y agoThis is the kind of perspective I don't hear from within the US. How far does the metaphor go? Is it just the meddling, superiority complex, and halting of technological advance? Or do other Trisolaran traits such as inability to lie also have an analogue? (I kind of doubt it goes too deep. Liu is great at concepts but the worldbuilding was not super in depth.)
- Barrin92 3y ago> Is it just the meddling, superiority complex, and halting of technological advance? For the most part it wasn't much more deep than that, although one more subtle point was that there were also a lot of comparisons between the chaotic and unstable climate of Trisolaris due to its multiple suns and the perceived political / cultural disorder and division in the US, in contrast to the stable climate of Earth.
- apatheticonion 3y ago[flagged]
- DiabloD3 3y agoRISC-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.
- Taniwha 3y agoIt'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)
- fuoqi 3y ago>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.
- DiabloD3 3y agoI'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.
- mardifoufs 3y agoI thought it was mostly to avoid US politics and possible tech bans export? Especially since the RISC V foundation is a non profit.
- neilv 3y ago> "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.
- DiabloD3 3y ago[flagged]
- trealira 3y agoSince Trump's election, both parties have gotten nationalist and protectionist. Biden led efforts to protect American companies with subsidies to companies that bought from American companies in both the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. If export restrictions push manufacturing out of America, I find it entirely plausible that it happened due to the ignorance and/or incompetence of the politicians pushing for them, not because they're secretly pushing for more offshoring and globalization (which politicians like Biden and Trump campaigned against).
- 0xParlay 3y ago[flagged]
- oefrha 3y agoWhat the hell does that even mean for open source? Need an export license to run a frigging GitHub project if it has anything to do with RISC-V at all? Does a compiler with a RISC-V target count? Projects with RISC-V builds?
- numpad0 3y ago
- mvncleaninst 3y ago> "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
- serf 3y agothe 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.
- sangnoir 3y ago> 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. Or didn't study recent history., the export control on strong encryption meant that American contributors would follow the letter of the law, and others outside of the US - eg Canadians for BouncyCastle[1] - would freely provide the missing illegal-to-export functionality to the rest of the world. 1. If memory serves, an American cryptographer once crossed into Canada to perform a 'forbidden commit'. The functionality technically wasn't an export of the US
- sneak 3y agoThey’ve done this before, famously with encryption software. prz and djb did great work to stop it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States > After four years and one regulatory change, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. FWIW, I imagine in 4-5 years this “battle” will pretty much already be decided wrt chipmaking in China.
- grotorea 3y agoIs it just me or is this strong cryptography export control again?
- bhouston 3y agoThe lawmakers raising this topic with Biden are being lobbied in part by ARM? Probably. RISC-V is mostly a threat to ARM more than anyone else.
- WiSaGaN 3y agoIt'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.
- juunpp 3y agoThis whole article is US government propaganda. Just look how they need to prepend "Communist" to "China" to make a point (not).
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- quantum_state 3y agoOnce the guys learn general relativity is used by GPS, they may just want to ban that … neither the US nor the world can afford this type of stupidity …
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- somsak2 3y agoGPS is US government invented, owned, and operated. Reagan made it free for use by anyone.
- Hizonner 3y agoWell, fuck.
- KingLancelot 3y ago[dead]
- another_story 3y agoI can't help but think this tech war will be a positive for most of us. Both China and the US seem to think they need a rival, and if they want to do it over chips I think it can only spur on innovation in open source hardware.
- whatever1 3y agoI can see both of the sides of the argument. It seems that we use US funding to help everyone circumvent ARM and x86. The problem is that US enemies are also recipients of the US technology contributions. But what is the alternative? Stop publishing everything ?
- miohtama 3y agoExactly. You make everything illegal or “regulated” (practically banned). The EU is already leading the way and has touched machine learning, end-to-end capable encryption and software distribution in various of its regulation directives. - Communications (every chat software must come with spyware installed) - AI (machine learning is too scary and authors say it will kill mankind, worse than a climate change) - RISC-V (terrorists can use it in missiles) - Open source (terrorists can run missiles and super computers with Linux) - Software distribution (either because of communications or AI) - Cryptocurrency wallets (interacting with a software wallet you wrote yourself makes your a suspicious and banks will deplatform you on the basis of anti-money laundering) You need to remember that end-to-end encryption exporting was illegal in the US until 90s. Now when Trump has stacked supreme court with his own sockpuppets they may want to reverse any decision regarding this like they did with abortion.
- omnimus 3y agoI just will say regulation doesnt equal ban. And that i am pretty sure EU didnt ban open source, RISC-V, encryption or software distribution. Some EU member states politicians have stupid ideas about communications/encryption so they push proposals but these are also often corporate lobby to gain more control over the networks. And afaik nothing has passed into actual law. If anything EU has been generaly aiming their regulations at the american big tech which many see as vultures feeding on users and most importantly avoiding taxes.
- panick21_ 3y agoChina and companies from China have done a lot of work on RISC-V. So the US is also recipient of China technology. Its kind of the point of open source.
- thayne 3y agoI suspect (but have no concrete evidence) that the real motivation behind this is that one or more companies feel threatened by risc-v, and hope that they by hindering collaboration, they can hobble their competitors on both sides of the ocean.
- in_excess 3y agoMarco Rubio, the senator pushing for this, received 250k from SoftBank in 2022.
- trealira 3y agoI'm sorry, I'm not following. What does receiving money from SoftBank in particular imply?
- tempaccount420 3y agoProbably the same thing the grandparent post is implying? :)
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- pezezin 3y agoSoftBank owns ARM (or owned at that time).
- trealira 3y agoThanks, that makes it clear now. I looked them up, but didn't find that part out.
- sva_ 3y agoIt seems like he received $14100 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/softbank-corp/recipients?id=D000067204 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/softbank-corp/recipients?id...
- skybrian 3y agoI’m wondering which technology they mean? It doesn’t seem to be in the article. Surely not RISC-V instruction formats? That’s just the API. It doesn’t seem like the hard part of making a chip?
- justinclift 3y agoFrom the article: Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House select committee on China, said in a statement to Reuters that the Commerce Department needs to "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."
- imtringued 3y ago>That’s just the API. It doesn’t seem like the hard part of making a chip? When I look at the number of x86 competitors, I'm pretty sure that is the hardest part by far...
- photonbeam 3y agoSeems like the ARM lobbyists are making moves
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- petre 3y agoARM is a company from the UK, so we'd hear this from the UK government if the ARM lobbists were making moves. It's probably Intel or just dumb senators who heard about RISC-V but not MIPS which was also open sourced.
- blackoil 3y agoLobbying will be done where you'll get max bang for buck.
- in_excess 3y agoRubio received 250k from SoftBank last year.
- rkagerer 3y agoI'm glad I don't see a single comment here supporting this nonsense. I hope some of the intelligence and understanding from this community permeates to the general public should these morons attempt to proceed with their ill-conceived plan.
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- aiunboxed 3y agoWhat is the incentive for big giants like Intel, Qualcomm, and Nvidia to adopt RISC-V? Isn't their moat their in-house chips? I guess it is more about companies which don't have their own proprietary chips or companies in developing nations.
- maven29 3y agoReally, it's for anyone who's core competency isn't selling general-purpose compute, but will have to design their own ASICs anyway. For example, when WD open-sourced their SweRV cores in 2019, they also committed to shipping 1 billion copies of the particular design. Beyond just the software ecosystem, they might be looking at incentivizing IP vendors to contribute to a rich ecosystem of interconnects, peripherals, and design/verification software.
- phkahler 3y ago>> What is the incentive for big giants like Intel, Qualcomm, and Nvidia to adopt RISC-V? Isn't their moat their in-house chips? Every chip company other than Intel and AMD licenses designs or ISA from ARM. Risc-V has no licensing fees if you design your own, and there are even free designs out there. It's not feasible to create your own instruction set. You also have to build a whole bunch of software infrastructure for it and convince people to use it and port apps to it. Intel doesn't license x86. ARM costs money, and RISC-V is an open standard that was competently designed by some very smart people. It is also the 3rd most well supported ISA from a software point of view.
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- tritiy 3y ago"The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is abusing RISC-V to get around U.S. dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips." In other words "We should be the best .. they should not be allowed to be the best!"
- joshbaptiste 3y agoWhen the USA feels threatened by a rising power the answer is usually to cripple the rise rather than directly compete
- Incipient 3y agoSeems pretty universal throughout history, and no different with even China themselves. If a country feels threatened, they retaliate/seek to block it. Our PM asked for an inquiry into the origins of covid, and China banned our beef, wine, barley, and coal imports. There was no inquiry. Seems China won that one.
- nojvek 3y agoWhat happened to “May the best player win”? The US can throw a fit, but technology is inherently human and RISC-V is an open instruction format. Sooner or later China will get a powerful working chip. Not in the best interest of US to be an enemy of a billion person nation. Esp the nation that is the world’s factory. When China couldn’t supply PPP gear in Covid, 100s of thousands died. I’d rather wish our Senators work on bringing manufacturing back to US instead of playing no-trade games.
- wyuenho 3y agoWhat happened to the level playing field? China doesn't invest and open source anything, why should the US subsidize their technological advancement?
- imtringued 3y agoThe C910 is one of the most popular RISC-V processor designs and it is open source and from China.
- est 3y ago> China doesn't invest and open source anything I actually wrote a blog on that (2019) https://blog.est.im/201906/stdout-003 https://blog.est.im/201906/stdout-003
- wyuenho 3y agoLet me know when you have an example of an open source Chinese industry standard, essentially subsidized by the Chinese government. The only example I can think of is Beidou, which nobody uses.
- est 3y ago> an open source Chinese industry standard, essentially subsidized by the Chinese government Hey I do have an example: Richard Stallman's only computer is a Lemote Yeeloong netbook (using the same company's Loongson processor https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html Not exactly a well-organized open source community but it's there https://github.com/loongson-community/ https://github.com/loongson-community/ A modern one is https://www.openatom.org/ https://www.openatom.org/ not many popular projects though but it's state-funded. > Beidou, which nobody uses. except iPhone 11/12/13/14/15 (with the XMM 7660 chip) and every Android phone using Qualcomm iZat chip (shipped with almost every Snapdragon processor since 2013) And it's not "open-source" per se, Beidou is just some kind of satellite signal that happens to be compatible with GNSS protocol, so chip makers and make few tweaks to provide location service.
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