US-China tech war: top Chinese scientist envisions forked RISC-V chip design standard to cushion decoupling impact

Computing expert Bao Yungang said China could handle sanctions better than Russia by developing a ‘RISC-X’ chip architecture for use by Belt and Road countries

The idea of forking the free semiconductor architecture comes amid concerns in China that even open source code could come with sanctions risks

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A RISC-V prototype chip. Chinese scientist Bao Yungang recently said in a post online that China could weather sanctions better than Russia because of its semiconductor talent and the ability to fork the open source RISC-V architecture. Photo: Handout

Published: 10:30pm, 23 Jun 2022

A top Chinese computer scientist said China is better positioned than Russia to cope with possible sanctions on chip design architecture from Western countries, adding that the country could develop a different ecosystem based on the RISC-V architecture and expand it among members of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Bao Yungang, a computing technology expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the secretary general of the China RISC-V Alliance, made the comments on the Chinese question-and-answer platform Zhihu in response to inquiries about whether China would face “supply disruptions” in the event of technological decoupling from the US.

Bao said China could fare much better than Russia under extreme scenarios involving sanctions and war because of its capabilities in central processing unit (CPU) research, sizeable talent base and large market.

“In extreme cases, RISC-V related standard specifications can be bifurcated into RISC-X, and China is fully capable of advancing the evolution of the RISC-X standard independently and building an ecosystem together with Belt and Road countries,” Bao said.

Chinese Academy of Sciences expert Bao Yungang. Photo: Handout

“China’s RISC-X products may not be able to enter the United States and other Western countries – just like Huawei products today, but this doesn’t affect the sales and application of these products in Belt and Road countries,” he added. “RISC-X can still be maintained as open source so that developing countries, with 6.6 billion people, can develop an [independent] ecosystem.”

Bao did not respond to requests for comment.