RISC-V, US vs. China: Are you kidding us?

[SiliconWizard]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-china-tech-war-risc-v-chip-technology-emerges-new-battleground-2023-10-06/

[DavidAlfa]

Well, US has long been playing the King of the hill, bullying every existing country that could rival their power, blocking/banning oil, technology, resources... So not strange China is giving some love back.
We Europeans had enough wars during the last millenia, now we simply want to live in peace, but depending on everyone for resources we're the ones paying this crap off.

[themadhippy]

an open-source technology that competes with costly proprietary technology

And theres the real reason for there "concerns",how dare you use a cheaper option that dont get us a slice of the pie.

[Kim Christensen]

Sadly, a side effect of this could be more restrictions on open source project support by industry. 
Plus, enjoy having your Digikey/Mouser/etc orders delayed for yet another reason. 

[SiliconWizard]

I sincerely hope this will just remain a couple senators waving their hands and nothing more.
If it actually turns into some kind of ban, I'll let you think about all the possible consequences and the precedent that it would set.
Indeed, any open-source project embraced by China could suddenly become banned in the US (and thus everywhere else they have power). And yes, ultimately that coud mean open-source in general, as you can't "tame" open-source.

Let's all hope the horrific world that is already ahead of us doesn't get any worse.
Please.

[tridac]

Peace only works if all sides play by agreed rules. Unfortunately, some don't and some have a long history of ip theft...

[2N3055]

Quote from article:
.....
"Communist China is developing open-source chip architecture to dodge our sanctions and grow its chip industry," Rubio said in a statement to Reuters. "If we don't broaden our export controls to include this threat, China will one day surpass us as the global leader in chip design."
....

Translation: our export sanctions of US technology did not stop China making it's own with their own effort and knowledge....
How dare they work hard and make their own technology! We forbid !.....

[langwadt]

RISC-V must be getting pretty good when industry lobbyist starts paying politicians to try and restrict it

[iMo]

Presidential elections in US are coming..

[SiliconWizard]

Presidential elections in US are coming..

Yeah I know. As I said, let's hope it's just political marketing and it will never come to "fruition".

[pqass]

Damn those commie hippies from Berkeley givin' it all away again!    /s

ARM should be nervous since products with their tech have a faster life-cycle than x86 and are less entrenched.

[RoGeorge]

Presidential elections in US are coming..

Are they?  I've heard elections are suspended during wartime.  So far there are at least 3 loose ends that can be used to put USA at war, Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

[soldar]

Peace only works if all sides play by agreed rules. Unfortunately, some don't and some have a long history of ip theft...

There are no "agreed rules". Each country makes their own rules and for the last few centuries western countries have been imposing their "rules" on the rest of the world.

The only effective rule is "might makes right".

The reality is that those who have property (IP or other)  are great defenders of property rights even if they acquired the property by stealing it.

The thieves of IP today are the protectors of IP of tomorrow just like the USA had little concern for foreign IP rights in the 19th century and British authors saw their works mercilessly pirated in America.

Each country points out the rules that it benefits from while totally ignoring the rules that get in their way.

[soldar]

Are they?  I've heard elections are suspended during wartime.  So far there are at least 3 loose ends that can be used to put USA at war, Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

This is wrong. Pure BS.

[SiliconWizard]

Are they?  I've heard elections are suspended during wartime.  So far there are at least 3 loose ends that can be used to put USA at war, Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

This is wrong. Pure BS.

Well, let's try to recall a single year in the past decades when the US was not at war with some other country. If it suspended elections, there would never be any election in the US.

[beanflying]

Peace only works if all sides play by agreed rules. Unfortunately, some don't and some have a long history of ip theft...

The UK and the USA would be the last two countries I would take ANY critique on IP theft from, both have a very very long history of doing just that. Doesn't excuse China but hypocrisy matters too!

[Gerhard_dk4xp]

No war in about a dozen of years since the declaration of independence.
And if there is no external enemy at hand, the own North vs. South will do.
Or the NRA.


To be more on-topic: is there an open VHDL or verilog implementation of a
small RISC-V family member? Microblaze style, just good enough for C?

Gerhard

[thermistor-guy]

...
Are they?  I've heard elections are suspended during wartime.  So far there are at least 3 loose ends that can be used to put USA at war, Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The US held elections even during the Civil War and WWII. What you've heard (and haven't bothered to check) is rubbish.

[pickle9000]

RISC-V reminds me of A.I. don't do it, the world will be destroyed. Meanwhile everyone does it and stopping them is wishful thinking..

[CatalinaWOW]

RISC-V must be getting pretty good when industry lobbyist starts paying politicians to try and restrict it

I suspect this is the closest to correct on this thread.  Our senators have no clue about what will lead to chip leadership, not even enough understanding to correctly quote the Cliff Note summaries prepared for them.  Unfortunately this means that they can't do what would be appropriate to allow competition by US industry.

China understands this better than we do, and is willing to use all means, fair or foul to achieve this.  Recall how they rejected established standards for CD/DVD to establish unique China standards for these services to provide a walled garden for local development.

[SiliconWizard]

Obviously these senators have no clue - the thread was not about whether it made any sense at all, but a wishful hope that it will never make it through.

And sure China will do everything they can to move forward, just like the US. But I fail to see how using an open-source ISA (not even an open-source implementation of a RISC-V core, as they have their own implementations for the most part) equates to be "willing to use all means". This makes absolutely no sense. Everyone is free to use it. That's the whole point.

It makes zero sense, except looking like a tantrum because due to open-source, the US may not be able to force everyone to use their proprietary products anymore. Come on.

[BravoV]

Obviously these senators have no clue ....

They are just a bunch of clown, example at the US senate Tiktok's hearing ... 

[CatalinaWOW]

Obviously these senators have no clue - the thread was not about whether it made any sense at all, but a wishful hope that it will never make it through.

And sure China will do everything they can to move forward, just like the US. But I fail to see how using an open-source ISA (not even an open-source implementation of a RISC-V core, as they have their own implementations for the most part) equates to be "willing to use all means". This makes absolutely no sense. Everyone is free to use it. That's the whole point.

It makes zero sense, except looking like a tantrum because due to open-source, the US may not be able to force everyone to use their proprietary products anymore. Come on.

I don't have any objections to open source.  But large markets (China, EU, US) may find it advantageous to control imports of open source items on their areas.  Done wisely this could prove benefits to local producers, perhaps even producing the same open source items.

My comment was only to suggest that the US hasn't been very wise in this area, for at least a half century.  As a whole both our political and business leaders have arrogantly thought that our once dominant economic position was due to some intrinsic superiority, and not recognized that brains are a worldwide commodity. 

[2N3055]

Obviously these senators have no clue - the thread was not about whether it made any sense at all, but a wishful hope that it will never make it through.

And sure China will do everything they can to move forward, just like the US. But I fail to see how using an open-source ISA (not even an open-source implementation of a RISC-V core, as they have their own implementations for the most part) equates to be "willing to use all means". This makes absolutely no sense. Everyone is free to use it. That's the whole point.

It makes zero sense, except looking like a tantrum because due to open-source, the US may not be able to force everyone to use their proprietary products anymore. Come on.

I don't have any objections to open source.  But large markets (China, EU, US) may find it advantageous to control imports of open source items on their areas.  Done wisely this could prove benefits to local producers, perhaps even producing the same open source items.

My comment was only to suggest that the US hasn't been very wise in this area, for at least a half century.  As a whole both our political and business leaders have arrogantly thought that our once dominant economic position was due to some intrinsic superiority, and not recognized that brains are a worldwide commodity.

I really like how nicely, politely but up to the point you formulated that.

[Nominal Animal]

RISC-V reminds me of A.I.

Poor analogy.  RISC-V is like Linux: it works, but will never be the Microsoft many demand and expect it to become.

"You'll never become relevant [on the desktop/in the US political military-industial complex], until you become the very thing your creators found dissatisfactory for their own needs and started building an alternative for in the first place."

Just like Microsoft, they will fight silly, they will fight dirty, and then they will lose, and change their minds.

Current "AI", on the other hand, is just Clippy on steroids: a content generation tool for those with nothing original or useful to say.  You think 4chan and conspiracy forums are the cesspit of the interwebs?  You've seen nothing yet: with ubiquitous LLMs comes personalized vapid AI-generated ad-based content, optimized based on billions of hours of human work, to turn you into the easily replaceable subservient consumer to be exploited by those who'll own the world.  By the time you'll eat ze bugs, you'll believe it's really the moral thing, the ethical thing, the best thing to do; and you will indeed be happy.