Today, chip manufacturers have to pay royalties to the likes of Arm and Intel on the use of their chip designs. And with the various trade barriers and restrictions that countries like the United States are starting to implement, some parties are starting to look at alternatives.
In that step, one of the efforts that is now receiving support from various parties is RISC-V.
RISC-V is an open-source effort that offers chip designs that can be used in any hardware or software development – royalty-free. It is also joined by parties from the academic world in its development.
Recently, due to trade barriers by the United States, the RISC-V project is seen receiving the support of various companies from China. Today, around 13 members out of 25 premier members for RISC-V are from China.
These include companies such as Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba Cloud, and most recently Tencent.
In addition to the company, it is also joined by Google, Intel, Qualcomm and Seagate.
By becoming a paid premier member, it allows this company to receive the ability to vote on direction and several other advantages.
The development of RISC-V is arguably still in its infancy today, but like many other open source projects, it is not impossible that this project will also be in the spotlight in another decade or two.