Alliance backs RISC-V chip alternative

More than 50 Chinese semiconductor firms and 10 research institutes have announced plans to establish an industry alliance for RISC-V, which offers electronics firms and consumers more chip technology options besides those offered by Intel and ARM.

The China RISC-V Industry Consortium was founded Wednesday in Shanghai, with members including VeriSilicon and UNISOC, top chip designers in China.

RISC-V, or reduced instruction set computer, is another ISA — instruction set architecture ­ — along with Intel’s X86 and ARM architectures.

Shanghai supports the RISC-V standard, which is a secure and cost-efficient semiconductor standard.

Globally, the RISC-V community attracts firms like Google, IBM, Samsung and Qualcomm, said Fu Xinhua, vice chairman of the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Information Technology.

Last year, Shanghai’s integrated circuit industry revenue hit 120 billion yuan (US$17.4 billion), with 500 professional companies in the city, said the commission.