America could drive innovation... or inject fear and doubt and kill off choice
Ahead of the annual RISC-V Summit in Silicon Valley's Santa Clara, taking place this week, Andrew 'bunnie' Huang - a noted hardware hacker, electronics biz owner, and author - said attempts by politicians to somehow stop China from using RISC-V was destined to backfire on American companies. He urged the Biden administration to instead take action to promote rather than stifle innovation in that part of the chip sector.
Perhaps the politicians think they'll be able to cut off Beijing's access to the bits of the RISC-V specification that were made by US persons, or RISC-V chips that were designed or made on American soil, or just put up a firewall between themselves and China on RISC-V. It's not entirely clear. In fact, Huang argues that US efforts to stifle China's chip industry have largely motivated the Middle Kingdom to try and end its reliance on Western technologies. Rather than spend money on US-developed chips, Chinese outfits are putting that money toward building their own, he noted.
Rather than putting limits on RISC-V, Huang suggests the President take steps toward investing in domestic development of the architecture.