US sanctions on RISC-V chip tech would play straight into China’s hands

A US pull-out would leave China the most powerful player in developing and setting standards for the leading open-source chip technology, disadvantaging American companies and giving Chinese firms a critical boost

Stanley Chao

Published: 4:30pm, 8 Feb 2024

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In the latest attempt to hobble China’s access to advanced chip technologies, Washington politicians are pressuring President Joe Biden to prohibit American companies and personnel from collaborating with the Chinese on a leading form of open-source software technology – RISC-V. But if the US stops helping to develop it, the risks will all be on the American side.

An American pull-out from RISC-V would hurt domestic hi-tech firms, damage the nation’s standing in the world and ultimately allow China to move closer to technological and geopolitical parity with the United States. In short, the move would backfire.

RISC-V, a free and downloadable software that defines how processing chips interact with a product’s software, competes with offerings from tech giants Arm Holdings and Intel. Over 10 billion RISC-V chips, embedded in everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances, have been sold since the architecture’s inception in 2010.

The software isn’t owned by any one entity. It is managed by the Switzerland-based non-profit RISC-V International, which comprises more than 4,000 companies (including Qualcomm, Google, Huawei and Tencent) that collaborate to define the technical specifications.

To the extent that RISC-V already works to China’s advantage, US sanctions would only enhance that dynamic. No doubt China sees the geopolitically neutral and open-source RISC-V architecture as a means to escape America’s stranglehold on advanced chips and achieve technological self-sufficiency. Towards that end, China would want nothing more than to see American interests bow out of the consortium, leaving Beijing as the most powerful player.

A full-blown ban would give China unfettered opportunities to sway RISC-V to its advantage, setting technical standards and shaping the playing field for the benefit of its domestic companies. American firms, left out in the cold, would fall further behind in setting international standards.

At the RISC-V industry forum in Shanghai on August 28, nine Chinese chip companies announced an alliance that includes not suing each other over patent infringements. Photo: Weibo

In the case of RISC-V, China has already nurtured a widespread ecosystem. The country has more than 300 companies developing products using RISC-V and accounts for more than half of the market share of RISC-V chips shipped worldwide. China is second only to the US in terms of hi-tech start-ups and manpower dedicated to developing RISC-V and could overtake it by 2030. A US withdrawal from RISC-V would simply speed up China’s pre-eminence.

When I worked at Kingston Technology, the world’s largest memory chip maker, we strived to join and lead the various international standards committees. It was no secret, we sought to influence the next generation of memory products in our favour. Our annual capital expenditures, revenue forecasts and personnel hires often depended on how these committees tweaked manufacturing and technical specifications. South Korean, Taiwanese and mainland Chinese firms did the same.

Of course, the US would not want to go it alone in pulling out of RISC-V. As happened with its most recent chip sanctions, Washington would undoubtedly demand that the European Union, Japan and South Korea also go along with the sanctions. Companies like Nokia, NXP, Sony and Samsung would, just as surely, protest. They have invested heavily in RISC-V to cultivate a promising technological ecosystem that is projected to reach US$100 billion by 2030, amounting to 25 per cent of the world’s “system on chip” market.

The fallout would put American firms at a competitive price disadvantage. They would also lose out on the technical advantages that RISC-V offers: faster development cycles, better performance and reduced power consumption. Never mind that RISC-V is completely free, whereas competitors Arm and Intel charge anywhere from US$1 million to US$10 million in licensing fees and up to 2 per cent in per-chip royalties. (Last year, Arm’s annual revenue topped US$2.6 billion.)

Were China to control the future of RISC-V, Chinese firms could one day lead the world in next-generation products for some of the world’s most important industries, including consumer electronics, automotive and aerospace.

Washington has yet to make a convincing argument that RISC-V poses a clear and present danger to national security. RISC-V’s architecture is largely developed by consumer-oriented firms that produce smartphones, automotive electronics and kitchen appliances. For instance, Meta announced it is employing RISC-V to run some of its AI computing, while Google and Qualcomm will jointly develop RISC-V-based wearable devices.

Even if valid security concerns about RISC-V were identified, behemoth companies like Intel, Google and Siemens would do everything in their power to ensure the architecture remained spy-proof and free of back doors. Such measures could include guard rails to prevent RISC-V from being used for military applications.

In the end, a US exit from the RISC-V market would play directly into China’s hands. It would grant Beijing exactly what it wanted: unrestricted access to a leading-edge chip technology with no American strings attached.

Moreover, America’s voluntary abdication of RISC-V stakeholder status would reduce the country’s global influence. US allies would be forced to make an uncomfortable choice about whether to abandon a budding but promising technology. Their decisions might well disappoint American China hawks.

Biden’s recent chip sanctions have had limited success in hindering China and enhancing American security. A decision to pull out of RISC-V would not only fail by those metrics; it would strengthen America’s biggest rival. The operative word again is backfire.

Stanley Chao was previously executive vice-president of US chip maker Kingston Technology and is the author of “Selling to China: A Guide for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses”