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World working together ‘as one ecosystem’ on RISC-V chip research: executive
Alibaba vice-president Qi Xiaoning says global tech firms continue to build a unified, open-standard ecosystem amid rising geopolitical barriers
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Global cooperation on the RISC-V chip architecture remains resilient despite intense US-China technological rivalry, according to a chip veteran at Chinese e-commerce and AI giant Alibaba Group Holding.
Speaking at the South China Morning Post’s China Conference 2026 on Tuesday, Alibaba vice-president Qi Xiaoning said major companies from around the world including the United States, China, India, Brazil and Europe were working together “as one unified ecosystem” on the RISC-V open-standard chip architecture for edge and cloud applications.
“When we use a single architecture, people from different continents, different cultural backgrounds, we get together, we work together and make friends,” Qi, a semiconductor veteran, told the audience. “And also like trade, [we] promote friendship between different countries.”
“Collaboration [in RISC-V] is already the reality; it’s happening.”
RISC-V, which stands for fifth-generation reduced instruction set computer, is an open-standard instruction set architecture and a highly accessible blueprint that enables users to design central processing units (CPUs).
The architecture has surged in popularity in China because it is free to use and modify, as Beijing and local businesses race to reduce their reliance on foreign proprietary technology amid Washington’s tightening tech curbs.
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