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China Government Open Source United States

America's Commerce Department is Reviewing China's Use of RISC-V Chips (reuters.com) 130

Posted by EditorDavid from the RISC-y-business dept.
An anonymous reader shared a report this week from Reuters: The U.S. Department of Commerce is reviewing the national security implications of China's work in open-source RISC-V chip technology, according to a letter sent to U.S. lawmakers...

The technology is being used by major Chinese tech firms such as Alibaba Group Holding and has become a new front in the strategic competition over advanced chip technology between the U.S. and China. In November, 18 U.S. lawmakers from both houses of Congress pressed the Biden administration for its plans to prevent China "from achieving dominance in ... RISC-V technology and leveraging that dominance at the expense of U.S. national and economic security."

In a letter last week to the lawmakers that was seen by Reuters on Tuesday, the Commerce Department said it is "working to review potential risks and assess whether there are appropriate actions under Commerce authorities that could effectively address any potential concerns."

But the Commerce Department also noted that it would need to tread carefully to avoid harming U.S. companies that are part of international groups working on RISC-V technology.
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America's Commerce Department is Reviewing China's Use of RISC-V Chips More

America's Commerce Department is Reviewing China's Use of RISC-V Chips

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  • Now this one is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday April 28, 2024 @07:34PM (#64431530)

    This isn't "they have a major agitprop channel to our population", it's not "they have a major electronic spy network deployed", and it's not "they can compromise our infrastructure".

    This one is, "they might start building their own and stop paying us royalties, so we need to hamstring them ASAP".

    I mean, it's historically accurate American foreign policy, but it's still wrong and a lot more difficult than the TikTok ban to justify while claiming the high road.

    • Re:Now this one is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday April 28, 2024 @07:56PM (#64431572)

      They probably cannot do it. RISK-V is under a free license. They are trying to control something they do not own.

      Also, these attempts to restrict China seem to be more and more desperate.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        If anything comes of it, it will probably be more trade war nonsense like limiting imports of Chinese RISC-V processors.

        Instead of, I don't know, maybe trying to compete by making our own ones? They could even claim they are more trustworthy, at least to Americans. Only NSA backdoors to worry about, no CCP (it's would actually be the MSS, but CCP sounds better).

      • It's even sillier when you consider that China would have no problems making their own x86 CPUs. They have enough people that they don't need to sell them outside the country. The ISA they use isn't all that important anyways unless you need binary compatibility with some existing software and can't run it through an emulation layer.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        If they can't stop Chinese companies from selling Chinese products direct to Americans, American companies might have to lower prices, and that would delay the CEO's and major shareholders buying their new winter yachts.

        The horror of it all!

    • ...and it shows that the other instances are wrong/bogus too, and the moral standing is totally manufactured.

      At least they now separate national security and economic security. Previously, they were conflated. Really the USA is resisting its decline by squashing others, China in this case, down, rather than competing more fervently.

      Also, I've heard that China is a significant contributor to risc-v, so everyone would lose out. Though, I guess the sinophobic USA would claim those contributions are attempts to

      • Re: Now this one is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday April 28, 2024 @08:11PM (#64431592)

        There are some legitimate complaints for both sides - China is not a free country and can compete in many areas with a manufactured advantage. The US is not known for honesty and integrity in trade, and will often use political, economic, or military muscle to dominate rather than try to compete compete on a level playing field.

        If I'm going to choose one over the other, it is going to be the US, but neither one is 'the good guy' here.

        • Re: Now this one is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)

          by JamesTRexx ( 675890 ) on Sunday April 28, 2024 @08:41PM (#64431624) Journal

          Also, the USA, among other Western nations of course, made use of that cheap manufacturing advantage by having moved a lot of domestic production to China for so many years.

          Great idea, corporate capitalism. Who would have guessed there'd be consequences to squeezing every dime out of production.

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Seeing the violent crackdown on peaceful protestors in the US in the last week, I'm not sure the US can really claim to be a free country either. Glass houses and all that.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by msauve ( 701917 )
            >peaceful protestors

            I'm not sure I'd classify those demonstrations as peaceful. UN comments on The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [un.org] say "In accordance with article 20 of the Covenant, peaceful assemblies may not be used for propaganda for war (art. 20 (1)), or for advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence (art. 20 (2))." And there sure seems to be a lot of that going on.

            • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Every genocidal regime says that. There would be no protests at all if merely saying it made it true. That's basically what Russia and China do.

              Ironically, they are protesting against racial hatred.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by msauve ( 701917 )
                Ignoring the current violence (read the news), how is even calling for divestment from Israel *not* "advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination?"

                >they are protesting against racial hatred

                ...by promoting it.

                • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

                  by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  Because Israel is, as the ICJ noted, prima facie committing genocide. It wasn't "advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination" when we boycotted South Africa. It's not that when the US decides to sanction China for what it is doing the Uyghurs. It's a response to clear and well documented actions.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by msauve ( 701917 )
                    The US isn't protesting on the lawn when they sanction another nation, so any comparison to your "peaceful protest" is a non sequitur. Sure, the Israelis are assholes and overreacted. Hamas knew that before they murdered civilians and took hostages, causing Israel's "response to clear and well documented actions." There's plenty of blame for both sides.

                    But, you're trying to change the discussion to something completely different.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by sjames ( 1099 )

                      Yes, there is plenty of bad on both sides. So why should we help one bad side over the other? Perhaps we should stay out of it rather than fueling the fire.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by sjames ( 1099 )

              They are protesting AGAINST U.S. involvement in foreign war activities.

            • "UN comments on The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights say "In accordance with article 20 of the Covenant, peaceful assemblies may not be used for propaganda for war (art. 20 (1)),"

              Anti-war propaganda is the opposite of that.

              "or for advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence (art. 20 (2))."

              Again, this is protesting AGAINST those things.

              You are literally claiming the opposite of what is happening.

              You have gone full n

          • The "Pro-Palestinian" protesters always seem to come with significant numbers of "kill Jews" protesters.

            The Venn diagram isn't a perfect circle, but it's close enough that if I were running a college I'd have informed the participants that their gatherings were banned as soon as the first, sadly inevitable, antisemitic hate crime happened and had a zero-tolerance "you're out, no refund, no returning... and if you didn't belong here in the first place, say hello to the nice officer and enjoy your gift of met

          • No country has a perfect record on freedom. To equate the US and China in terms of freedoms though is somewhere beyond daft.

            One of the two is not currently engaging in genocide against a religious minority population, after all. Among many other things.

            "glass houses" used like this turns rapidly into being unable to criticise anything at all unless you're perfect, which handily means no one can criticise anything since no one is perfect.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Eh, the US supplies Israel with weapons and money. Blinken has apparently been warned that they can't guarantee those weapons aren't be used on Palestinian civilians, and it's pretty clear that they are. Current estimates are around 14 years to clear the unexploded munitions alone.

              Of course, Germany and the UK also supply them with bombs. Germany is currently facing an ICJ complaint over it.

              Supplying them knowing full well what they will be used for is as good as participating directly in the genocide, in m

              • Try taking a billboard out criticising Xi Jinping and Biden and see how you fare.

                Neither country has a clean record but are you honestly arguing that the US is as oppressive as China?

                • Re: (Score:3)

                  by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  No, but I also don't deal in simple oppression-o-meter rankings either. I'm more interesting in the hypocrisy, rather than the argument that "we are bad, but not as bad as them!" How about not being bad at all?

                  • No, but I also don't deal in simple oppression-o-meter rankings either.

                    Thing is, your response to someone saying "X is bad" is saying "well Y is bad too". I don't really see how that's much difference, as it is essentially comparative: Unless you are looking to compare, why bring up Y when the subject is X?

                    I'm more interesting in the hypocrisy, rather than the argument that "we are bad, but not as bad as them!" How about not being bad at all?

                    Saying "Y is bad too" also doesn't advance the argument of how you

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                      I'm not saying "Y is bad", or accusing baron_yam of anything. Israel and everyone that helped them is in the wrong, full stop.

                      If you want the moral high ground, and to be taken seriously, don't do obviously and extremely bad things.

                    • I'm not saying "Y is bad"

                      You literally did about the USA, UK and Germany. I'm not sure why you're saying you aren't it given the strength of your words and you've written exactly the same sentiment again.

                      or accusing baron_yam of anything.

                      This entire thread was spawned from a comment Baron_Yam made and you responded to. If you're saying that nothing you say draws any context from the previous posts in the thread it's kind of hard to have a coherent conversation.

                      Israel and everyone that helped them is in the

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                      I meant I'm not doing the "X but what about Y" thing. I give up.

                    • I have literally no idea what you are talking about now.

            • "One of the two is not currently engaging in genocide against a religious minority population, after all."

              That is exactly what funding the holocaust in Gaza is. To the letter.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          U.S. companies frequently sell products made in China for several times what a Chinese company charges for practically the same product made in the same place.

          If American Capitalism was actually performing to spec, the Chinese companies wouldn't have nearly as much advantage as they do.

      • [...] the moral standing is totally manufactured.

        Probably in China.

      • > China is a significant contributor to risc-v

        I have no idea what the Commerce Department are up to, but TFS makes it sound like it's headed the way of TikTok. My personal view is that perhaps they're now spending a bit of time to look at those contributions to make sure American companies don't go ahead and make Risc-V chips that have Chinese surveillance features built into them.

        FWIW, a bit of malware getting into open source projects feels pretty bad, but also feels like a solvable problem with a bit

    • This one is, "they might start building their own and stop paying us royalties, so we need to hamstring them ASAP".

      Yea most of these China things seem more like the fruits of corporate lobbying against competition and less "national security".

    • The end of globalization (Score:4, Insightful)

      by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Monday April 29, 2024 @01:16AM (#64431882)
      The economic pendulum is swinging back from globalism.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Point of order though, ARM is a British company owned by a Japanese company, so the royalties would not have gone to the US anyway.

      ARM is the last big tech company the UK has. Or had, depending on how you look at it. It's 90% owned by Softbank, the Japanese firm that also bought WeWork.

  • You can look at it all you want, Commerce Dept. (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Sunday April 28, 2024 @07:39PM (#64431538)

    But there's limits to what you can do if it's a multinational open-source design.

    Nobody's exporting anything to China in this case. Nobody's exfiltrating data to China. You can't call the RISC-V CEO in for questioning any more than you can the Bitcoin CEO [imgflip.com]. Yes they could possibly harass members of the RISC-V working group(s) and punish them for science in the name of the public good (which, hate to say it, benefits everyone whether or not they're your geopolitical enemies).

    I'm not even a big fan of RISC-V in general, but please don't take a dump on an open source hardware effort just because some researchers in China decided that it's a good way to sidestep tech embargoes.

    • Guess it depends on your definition of Open Source but the one I'm familiar with requires that the license used doesn't discriminate against a individual or a group of people and that it must not discriminate against fields of endeavor

    • But not due to any Slashdotter's fault. I think the problem is with the original article focusing solely on the term "RISC-V". I believe the Commerce department is looking at export of American chip designs like SiFive (though they do have at least one South Korean major shareholder). Chip designs can be considered "RISC-V" chip intellectual property, but it is not the instruction set architecture that is of concern. It is the art of making a high speed competitive chip that happens to interpret the RISC
  • USA has completely lost the tech race. The Chinese out-compete on microchips, advanced manufacturing. Pretty much everything. They should never have outsourced critical production industries. Those industries won't be returning. Chinese engineers can now wander Shenzen picking parts out of bins and invent new things. We're already seeing Chinese innovating in things like a handheld 486 mini PC, which is something I would have thought would only get created in the West as a nostalgia toy. This used to be som

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dwedit ( 232252 )

      Why the hell would you want a 486 handheld mini PC? You can emulate one on an ARM chip instead, and get better performance and battery life.

    • We're already seeing Chinese innovating in things like a handheld 486 mini PC, which is something I would have thought would only get created in the West as a nostalgia toy.

      Pretty sure the Raspberry Pi I can buy for $25 is more or less the same thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      486 mini pc? Really out of everything possible in this day and age, taking industrial e-waste and up cycling it into a toy is what you pick?

      PS: look at PC104 form factor ... they have been around for decades

  • All IP was transferred to RISC-V International (Score:5, Informative)

    by waffle zero ( 322430 ) on Sunday April 28, 2024 @07:55PM (#64431566) Journal
    There is a reason that the USA nonprofit RISC-V Foundation stood down and transferred all IP to the newer Switzerland incorporated RISC-V International.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khchung ( 462899 )

      There is a reason that the USA nonprofit RISC-V Foundation stood down and transferred all IP to the newer Switzerland incorporated RISC-V International.

      If you think a Switzerland company can withstand the threat of sanctions from the US, you need to take a look at what happened to Swiss banks a few years ago.

      It won't be that difficult to force all western companies to stop talking to any Chinese companies regarding RISC-V, how much that could accomplish is questionable though.

      • Re:All IP was transferred to RISC-V International (Score:5, Informative)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot@worf . n et> on Sunday April 28, 2024 @11:16PM (#64431784)

        Why does everyone seem to think RISC-V has anything of importance?

        There is nothing of value in the RISC-V architecture.

        There are no trade secrets or anything special in RISC-V. It's just an architecture.

        All the "magic" in RISC-V is the same "magic" in ARM, or x86/x64 and other stuff - it's in the implementation.

        Nothing RISC-V has relates to the implementation. There are companies with interesting implementation like SiFive and others who have their own silicon. But that's it. RISC-V is not like ARM - you can't go to RISC-V and get a complete synthesizable CPU core from the get-go. It's not how it works there.

        You can find open implementations of a RISC-V core - there are several open-source ones, but there are many closed implementations as well.

        There's only 2 documents describing the ISA, a software implementation for testing purposes, and a formal description of the implementation.

        Some people in my company were exploring RISC-V. They didn't realize you didn't get an implementation like ARM. I told them you could license an implementation, or you could do it yourself (which did appeal to them as that way they could "own it all"). But to do that means you had to design the CPU yourself, as well.

        The only concern might be if China is using a RISC-V implementation that the US has blocked, but most RISC-V implementations aren't that performant to be a concern

        • China can design their own RISC-V implementations. Fabbing them on anything better than current SMIC nodes would be a trick, but the designs? They can do that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The value is that it is well supported by software. You could make your own architecture, but you would need to make compilers for it, and optimize them to produce good code. You would also need to port and maintain Linux.

          With RISC-V a lot of the work is done for you. You need to provide a Board Support Package like with ARM, but you don't have to do the really hard, time consuming work.

          As for performance, it is improving steadily, but it's not the be-all and end-all. Low power is a big deal too. For a lot

        • > There are no trade secrets or anything special in RISC-V.

          It's not what's in it that matters, it's what's not in it.

          If the Chinese people use chips without backdoors then they will have a global competitive advantage.

          Of course Americans could also do that but domestic spying is too important to the fat unearned paychecks of the DC intelligentsia.

        • Thanks - I just replied elsewhere in a similar vein, as I had not seen your post yet. I agree completely.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nnull ( 1148259 )

        Maybe a decade ago, but the political situation has changed. Just look at the EU going after Apple and forcing them to open their app store. If you think US threats of sanctions has the same effect as today, you're in for a reality check. No one in Europe is even afraid of the US anymore, in so far that European manufacturers are now just outright refusing to do sales to the US because of their ridiculous regulatory agencies being different state by state, city to city.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
          The Eu went after gate keepers (of which apple is one), the legislation in question also effects others, if it didn't, it would fail in in's first contact with the legal system. It's a technical distinction but an important one, the legislation did not say "Apple has to fit USB-C charging connectors on their phones, an other small electronics", it said "All small consumer electronics devices sold in the EU after date X has to be charged via a device side USB-C port" (quotes slightly paraphrased as I don't h

        • Which European companies have pulled out of the US market completely due to state-level regulations?

  • Isn't this the whole reason to use RISC-V? Being open and free?

    • Isn't this the whole reason to use RISC-V? Being open and free?

      I'm not sure what dominance in the RISC-V space would look like. I'm pretty sure I can wire one up from series 74 TTL chips if I want, or I can program it in a FPGA, or I can have a custom foundry bang me out a few hundred, or Intel and spit them out by the millions. TSMC might be the most popular foundry producing them but the barrier to entry is quite low.

      Thing is, I don't expect a huge market for discrete RISC-V processors any time soon. What I'd expect is more that they'll show up as embedded processors

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        I expect you could leverage the design to any degree of power you wanted. But it would take a lot of development work. Remember the current Intel chip started life as the 4004. Then there was a lot of development work.

      • Take a look at what Tenstorrent is doing with RISC-V:

        https://tenstorrent.com/ [tenstorrent.com]

        They're using RISC-V in at least part of their product lineup (you'll have to do some digging to see exactly how). With all the AI hype, China may do their best to copy their efforts, and maybe even steal some of their implementations.

        • With all the AI hype, China may do their best to copy their efforts, and maybe even steal some of their implementations.

          That's been the complaint against China since the '90s and it's been endlessly discussed. TBH, I have no idea how much truth there is behind the claims. I wouldn't call that "RISC-V dominance", it's plain ol' IP infringement. In fact, if they have to steal designs I'd say that's proof they don't dominate the architecture and design portion of the space. What they may dominate is mass manufacturing but that again is a separate and much talked about issue not specific to RISC-V.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sxpert ( 139117 )

        the issue here is that the chinese, smic in particular, would be able to crank out millions of fast enough chips to put into munitions... and talking of munitions, if Russia is said to be currently able to produce 10 times what NATO can, you can only imagine what China would be able to crank out... (thousand times, possibly more)

        • the issue here is that the chinese, smic in particular, would be able to crank out millions of fast enough chips to put into munitions... and talking of munitions, if Russia is said to be currently able to produce 10 times what NATO can, you can only imagine what China would be able to crank out... (thousand times, possibly more)

          Taking that backwards, I don't think Russia can outproduce NATO in munitions, not if we got serious about producing them. I don't have any data to support that other than the US GDP being something like 10x the Russian and Europe being another 10x.

          I'm also quite skeptical of a RISC-V tie to munitions. I strongly doubt getting the electronics for smart munitions is the limiting factor on production. There are plenty of alternatives to RISC-V processors (e.g. off the shelf ARM chips). In fact, since you can b

  • Appropriate action? Cool! Oh wait. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thesandbender ( 911391 ) on Sunday April 28, 2024 @09:08PM (#64431646)
    This is awesome. They're obviously going to examine the situation and come to the conclusion that:

    1. Tariffs and sanctions just encourage Chinese R&D and innovation and are, at best, a very temporary "fix"
    2. We need build a quality, meritocracy based educational system and puts all students on an equal footing (financially, socially, etc). Many of our advancements were based on the back of the GI Bill which gave 8 million veterans access to education they may not have otherwise had).
    3. Incentive long term corporate R&D
    4. Fix investing so it is strongly weighted towards a companies long term prospects, not their quarterly results.

    Just kidding. Both parties are going to continue to pretend that we're awesome, everyone else is backwards and if we keep our toys to ourselves no one else can possibly play.

    • Nobody honestly thinks China can be prevented from making technological advancements. Originally (e.g. pre-2021) the goal was to prevent China from stealing IP and to avoid feeding their worst inclinations.

      If China is determined to develop its own CPU IP and fabs (and other stuff we don't want to hand to them on a silver platter) then so be it.

      • You're conflating two different things. IP theft (which they do with abandon) and this current wave which is trying to block them from legitimately buying and building things. ASML lithography is banned. Nvidia is nerfed. This latest effort is going after license and royalty free RISC-V which was meant to be used by anyone. Why aren't they going after LoongsonISA (which is just a fork/clone of MIPS... which they did get a license for) or AMD's custom EPYC for mainland use?

        Most people here know it won

    • We need build a quality, meritocracy based educational system and puts all students on an equal footing (financially, socially, etc).

      LOL, not in America. Oh my lord no. Not a chance. As a society, we are tightly engripped by the potent drug called money. We won't give up that addiction even at the threat of death. Or in other words, "Fuck you, I got mine".

      If I were looking to start a family, it would most certainly NOT be within the borders of the USA. You mother fuckers are inebriated on that money thing. Freedom? Liberty? Only if you got money and luck; otherwise, prepare to get bent over with no lube.

  • Fucking politicians couldn't organise a fuckup in a brothel.
    The hardware designs in the various units of the riscv processor are what has to be protected.
    Cores might only run code half as fast because the magic sauce is in the hardware.
    So it is a great form of competition on a field leveled by a common free instruction set.
    This is what capitalism is all about - competition.
    You can't stop someone else from being cleverer than you.
    Because the Chinese government owns the IP, it can't be bought out by some slee

  • The cat is mostly out of the bag on this one. I suppose they could decide to block RISC-V designs from China in critical U.S. infrastructure, like they did with Huawei. They also could ban export of U.S. developed implementations. However, that's not much of an impediment and is just more incentive for China to fast track development of their own implementations. Most likely, they will decide there's either nothing worth doing, or they'll come up with a piece of performance regulation to at least look like

    • ... look like they are doing something.

      Biden is adding another tariff to Chinese steel and aluminum: This is despite the last tariff (by Trump) not helping the US steel industry and all the steel-import tariffs over the last 40 years, not helping the US steel industry. US factories can't manufacture sufficient steel to replace the steel not being imported from China: The result is fewer finished goods. Before that, banning steel imports meant US foundries closed because they couldn't buy the same steel in the USA.

      ... critical U.S. infrastructure ...

      While national security is a

      • China established their position as a major international steel producer by dumping in order to destroy foreign competition. The United States wasn't the only country in their crosshairs. At least in theory, countries outside of China should be able to produce enough steel to supply most (if not all) of the Western world without relying on Chinese steel.

        Or more to the point, the United States should be able to buy what it needs from other countries should tariffs make steel from China cost-prohibitive.

        Too

        • That cheap steel was of dubious quality, with tons of problematic inclusion. Resulting in many costly problems. China is a race to the bottom. Msybe they cleaned up their act but they have a spotty track record on quality control/honesty.

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