Alibaba’s T-Head joins global initiative to develop RISC-V software ecosystem, along with Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia
- The RISC-V Software Ecosystem Project has brought together 13 global industry leaders as its founding members, including Intel and Samsung
- T-Head has introduced eight RISC-V processors since its establishment, and four of them have are available as open-sourced IP
T-Head, the chip unit of Alibaba Group Holding, has joined a global initiative to develop a software ecosystem and accelerate commercialisation for RISC-V, as the open-source chip design architecture is increasingly seen as a potential alternative for proprietary Arm and x86 architectures.
The RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) Project, hosted by Linux Foundation European, a non-profit organisation enabling innovation through open source, has brought together 13 global industry leaders as its founding members, according to a press release issued by the organisation earlier this week.
It aims to enable “commercial-ready software” for application processors using the RISC-V architecture for mobile phones, consumer electronics, data centres, and automotive.
Founding members include some of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, including Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia from the US, Samsung Electronics from South Korea, and MediaTek and Andes Technology from Taiwan. T-Head, created by Alibaba in 2018 as its subsidiary to focus on chip design, is the only founding member from China.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
“It’s an exciting time to be part of the RISC-V community … However, this momentum must be supported by performant, secure, reliable and commercial-ready software,” said project chair Amber Huffman.
Members will “contribute financially and provide engineering talent to address specific software deliverables” prioritised by the project’s Technical Steering Committee, according to the press release. It added that the efforts will support the global open standard activities and achievements of RISC-V International, the non-profit home for the open-standard RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA).