US lawmakers urge President Joe Biden's administration to restrict US corporations' use of RISC-V, a Chinese open-source semiconductor technology that might undermine international tech industry relationships.

RISC-V, pronounced "risk five," competes with Arm Holdings' exclusive technology, a British semiconductor and software design business. RISC-V is a flexible technology that may be used in a wide range of tech products, including powerful processors for artificial intelligence (AI) and smartphone chips.

Several US legislators, including two Republican House committee chairmen, Senator Marco Rubio, and Democrat Senator Mark Warner, are asking the Biden administration to act on RISC-V for national security reasons.

US Lawmakers: Chinese Communist Party Taking Advantage of RISC-V

These legislators aim to limit US corporations' RISC-V participation as they worry that Beijing is taking advantage of US companies' open engagement to benefit China's semiconductor industry, which might damage US leadership in the semiconductor industry and help China modernize its military. 

The head of the House Select Committee on China, Representative Mike Gallagher, emphasized the necessity for the Commerce Department to require anybody from the United States to get an export license before conducting business with Chinese organizations about RISC-V technology.

These RISC-V regulatory requests are the latest in the US-China chip war. Broad export prohibitions, which the Biden administration seeks to revise this month, contributed to the conflict's escalation last year.

US Lawmakers worry that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using RISC-V technology to get around the supremacy of the United States in the intellectual property required for chip design.

Chairman Michael McCaul of the House Foreign Affairs Committee echoed this sentiment, saying, "The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is abusing RISC-V to get around US dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips. US persons should not be supporting a PRC tech transfer strategy that serves to degrade US export control laws," as quoted by Reuters.

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Rubio stated that China is creating an open-source chip architecture to get around US sanctions and boost its chip sector. The senator believes China might overtake the US in semiconductor design without strengthening export limits.

Warner expressed concern that current export-control regulations do not adequately cover open-source software, whether it be in cutting-edge semiconductor designs like RISC-V or AI.

A Swiss nonprofit foundation oversees for-profit firms' RISC-V development. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Pentagon provided funds for the technology's development in the Berkeley labs of the University of California.

Tech Industry Calls For Collaboration

RISC stands for reduced instruction set computer, and RISC-V proposes a completely alternative architecture for its instruction set. It runs on an open-source framework that permits unrestricted use to boost innovation and cut expenses, according to CNBC.

In addition, RISC-V is becoming increasingly popular in China, where a third of its cores are made. Chinese enterprises may independently produce semiconductors due to RISC-V's open-source design, even in Taiwan.

Industry players, including China's Huawei Technologies, Qualcomm, and Google, regard RISC-V as a possible substitute for well-established instruction set architectures despite political issues.

According to an EPS News report, they believe collaboration is necessary for the technology's evolution and its role in making chips cheaper and more flexible.

Jing Yang, president of the semiconductor division at Alibaba, and Carlie Su, chief technology officer of Taiwan's Andes Technology, express optimism that RISC-V will grow as a competitive alternative to well-established instruction set architectures, highlighting the significance of stakeholder cooperation.

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