The CEO of RISC-V International is afraid that the United States government’s move towards open source technology will slow down the development of new chips and hamper the global technology industry.
The comments came after Reuters reported last week that a growing number of US lawmakers were calling on the Biden administration to impose export restrictions on RISC-V, the open source technology overseen by the nonprofit foundation RISC-V International.
RISC-V technology can be used as a material for making chips for smartphones or artificial intelligence.
Big US companies such as Qualcomm and Google use RISC-V technology, as do Chinese companies such as Huawei Technologies Co.
In a blog post, Calista Redmond, head of RISC-V International, said RISC-V is no different from other open technology standards such as ethernet, which helps computers on the internet communicate with each other.
“The government’s planned actions to impose unprecedented restrictions on open standards will result in reduced access to global markets for products, solutions and talent,” wrote Redmond, quoted by Reuters, Wednesday (11/10/2023).
“Imposing two standards would result in incompatible solutions duplicating efforts and closing the market.”
Redmond wrote that RISC-V has received equal contributions from North America, Europe and Asia. The standards published by the foundation are not a complete blueprint for making chips.
By opening the RISC-V standard to all parties, it does not mean that RISC-V technology is easy to copy. Redmond emphasized that the information available via their open source platform is the same as the information available on private technology owned by other companies such as Arm Holdings.
Source : CNBC
