News US investigates China's access to RISC-V — open-source instruction set may become new site of US-China chip war

[Admin]

U.S. lawmakers again review the risks of China's access to powerful chips through the RISC-V standard, an open-source ISA that wants to remain open to all.

US investigates China's access to RISC-V — open-source instruction set may become new site of US-China chip war : Read more

 

[hotaru251]

this won't work.
Its rights holder being Swiss & open standard would easily be used agsint US gov's case.

Theres legit valid reasons to bar some stuff from another nation...this is not one of those cases. (and honestly is the example of why we need truly opensource options to prevent abuse by others)

still waiting for someone to try and ban breathing.

 

[bit_user]

FWIW, I think banning access to an ISA or open source (e.g. Linux, GCC) is going too far. I can't speak on legal grounds, but I worry that we'll end up with a huge schism in the tech world, where you basically have Eastern and Western tech that can't interoperate. That will ultimately hurt the US a lot more than current access to that tech is helping China.

I was worried about this, back when ARM was first used as a point of leverage. I was hoping for a WTO court case or something, in order to put such IP out-of-bounds.

 

[bit_user]

G7 should stop trading with China because the Chinese is too smart in Tech

That's not why they're doing it, but we can't talk about the real reason (political discussions are off limits).

this won't work.
Its rights holder being Swiss & open standard would easily be used agsint US gov's case.

ARM was UK-based and Japanese-owned, back when Huawei was barred from accessing its tech. The point of leverage is that it contained IP owned by USA-based citizens (and presumably companies ARM licensed it from). I don't know how deep the legal analysis ever went, on such claims.

Yes, RISC-V tried to insulate themselves by relocating to Switzerland, but if its patent pool includes any contributed by US companies (I think it must?), then you could still see the USA try to control it, in a similar way. Maybe Switzerland doesn't play ball and enforce those claims, but US lawmakers could at least try to control involvement in RISC-V or with Chinese entities by US companies.

Theres legit valid reasons to bar some stuff from another nation...this is not one of those cases. (and honestly is the example of why we need truly opensource options to prevent abuse by others)

I think it's not the reasons, but rather the tactic that's at issue.

 

[Pierce2623]

should shut down Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm... access to RISC-V so USA can go back to the stone age era. And G7 should stop trading with China because the Chinese is too smart in Tech and built a China Space Station that ban American astronauts -How Dare You? LOL. Only USA can ban Chinese astronauts in ISS even though it's called International and built mainly by Russia.

Nobody wants to cut off their access to American technology though, do they?

 

[Pierce2623]

FWIW, I think banning access to an ISA or open source (e.g. Linux, GCC) is going too far. I can't speak on legal grounds, but I worry that we'll end up with a huge schism in the tech world, where you basically have Eastern and Western tech that can't interoperate. That will ultimately hurt the US a lot more than current access to that tech is helping China.

I was worried about this, back when ARM was first used as a point of leverage. I was hoping for a WTO court case or something, in order to put such IP out-of-bounds.

How could a judge fo that with ARM when it’s NOT and open standard? ARM is a private company and didn’t HAVE to play ball with the US unless they want to maintain access to the American market.

 

[CmdrShepard]

Nobody wants to cut off their access to American technology though, do they?

If that meant never ever seeing the words "Recommended for you" or "Skip this ad in 30 seconds" I am all for it.

 

[roba67]

China is unilaterally pulling away from X86 due to US commerce policy (Raimondo), this is going to hurt Intel and AMD but it was predictable.

 

[watzupken]

US seems to own everything.

 

[bit_user]

US over-stepping is going from incredulous to ludicrous.

As long as this is just something being looked into by some Congressional committees, I'd say there's not much cause for concern. They're going to look into and say lots of things, sometimes just to score political points.

The time we should worry is if they start drafting bills that seem to have broad support. Either that, or the Executive branch decides to act within the bounds of existing laws.

So, let's try not to be too hyperbolic (just yet).

 

[parkerthon]

Does China simply having access to use the open source design mean they will somehow dominate? Any kind of ban would no doubt be very unilateral in nature. This means China will still use the open source patents anyway. US companies would have to go great efforts to only use certain components. It’s a messy solution that would accomplish nothing except poke China in the eye and make them even more adversarial.

 

[nookoool]

I doubt the politician making those statements even understands what a instruction set is at a very high level.

 

[mitch074]

ARM was UK-based and Japanese-owned, back when Huawei was barred from accessing its tech. The point of leverage is that it contained IP owned by USA-based citizens (and presumably companies ARM licensed it from). I don't know how deep the legal analysis ever went, on such claims.

Yes, RISC-V tried to insulate themselves by relocating to Switzerland, but if its patent pool includes any contributed by US companies (I think it must?), then you could still see the USA try to control it, in a similar way. Maybe Switzerland doesn't play ball and enforce those claims, but US lawmakers could at least try to control involvement in RISC-V or with Chinese entities by US companies.

I think it's not the reasons, but rather the tactic that's at issue.

The last time someone tried to pull that, it was SCO (as a Microsoft-funded puppet) to all users of Linux. The result : SCO is gone, most of the UNIX patents have been challenged and disqualified, and Microsoft is endorsing Linux.
This might just lead to faster adoption of RISC-V, actually.

Nobody wants to cut off their access to American technology though, do they?

Yeah - provided it's US-made. However, it's been a trend these last few decades that when the US government (as itself, or as a puppet to its lobbies) didn't want a country to do something, they'd throw their weight around... And simply get circumvented. They did that to France's Dassault on a chip inside the targeting system, Dassault redesigned it to be US-free (and performing better, actually).
More consumer-friendly, there's a reason h.265/HEVC didn't take over h.264 and we're getting AV1 instead, eventhough most companies behind it are US-based (apart from VideoLAN - damn, the French - again !)

So, yeah, considering past history, the US government trying to block China's access to RISC-V will merely cause the rest of the world to take note and actually invest in that architecture.

 

[bit_user]

there's a reason h.265/HEVC didn't take over h.264 and we're getting AV1 instead,

Mainly because the rights holders viewed the licensing scheme of h.264 as a financial failure and tried harder to "skim the till" on h.265. This made it too expensive for certain key use cases, which held back mass adoption. That created the window for something like VP8, VP9, or AV1 to swoop in and grab key marketshare. The h.265 folks got too greedy and failed to account for something like that happening.

Now, they get almost nothing. The schadenfreude is almost palpable!
; )

the US government trying to block China's access to RISC-V will merely cause the rest of the world to take note and actually invest in that architecture.

I disagree. I think it was the blocking of ARM which pushed people in the direction of RISC-V, because they thought the latter was "safe" from interference by governments. If that turns out not to be the case, I think some might turn away from it and embrace something else. Possibly something less free, like LoongArch.