China has enlisted tech giants Alibaba and Tencent to aid its efforts in designing semiconductor chips, as Beijing braces for further US-led sanctions aimed at suppressing Chinese computing power, reports the Financial Times.
The Chinese government has set up a consortium of companies and research institutes, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to create new chip intellectual property. Beijing wants to reduce its dependence on SoftBank-owned Arm, whose technology underpins the majority of semiconductors around the world.
The group is using Risc-V—pronounced “Risc-five”—an open-source chip design architecture created in 2010 by the University of California, Berkeley. Risc-V has emerged as a competitor to Arm in recent years.