By hmimcu 
The three mainstream architectures have always been at the forefront of public opinion. At present, the x86 architecture dominates the global high-performance computing field, while ARM dominates mobile computing. The emerging RISC-V has become the third largest chip architecture, with shipments of just over 10 billion. However, its development speed is faster, and it is expected to achieve 60 billion shipments by 2025.
Semiconductor Industry Horizon reporters interviewed SiFive, a company that provides RISC-V cores, on-site at IIC Shanghai in 2023. They stated that in recent years, China’s interest in RISC-V has increased, which has stimulated the popularization of this architecture. By 2025, more than 60 billion RISC-V cores will be integrated into physical ICs. Previously, Patrick Little, CEO and Chairman of SiFive, also stated that current customers have particularly strong market demand for the company. RISC-V will compete for the core of all future computing platforms. As the founder and market leader of RISC-V, we have a responsibility to lead this ecosystem forward and provide customers with advanced computing alternatives from Arm and other companies
How about the fierce competition among the three architectures in today’s market?
01
X86 replaced?
In January of this year, Intel disclosed data showing that in the 2022 fiscal year, its realized revenue was $63.1 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 20%; Net profit was $8 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 60%. Among them, there was a loss of $661 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, and it is expected that the loss will continue into the first quarter of this year. Many analysts believe that Intel’s efforts on the mobile end were too late, coupled with its early ecological management strategy being too closed and insufficient innovation in new fields. Its mobile chip architecture, including the ARM architecture, has a significant disadvantage in its later development, even in the “reserved land” of the X86 chip architecture, it is still suppressed by AMD. Meanwhile, Apple, the leader in mobile chip design, has begun to erode the X86 architecture and server market.
In 1978, with Intel’s release of 8086 processing, the world entered the era of x86 architecture. As early as the 1990s, VIA, a company founded by Cher Wang, chairman of HTC, in Taiwan Province, got the authorization of x86 architecture and launched x86 series chips, which were named “China Core”. However, for many reasons, VIA’s X86 chips were finally eliminated from the market. Before 2010, no company in mainland China had obtained authorization for x86 architecture.
However, since 2013, there have been changes in the domestic market, especially with the emergence of Megachip and Haiguang, which has shown domestic computer users the dawn of domestic X86 chips.
Since 2013, Shanghai Megachip has been involved in the development of X86 processors. However, according to information released on the official website, the latest PC and server chips were still released in 2019, namely the Pioneer KX-6000 and the Kaisheng KH-3000. Both chips are made of 16 nanometer technology, and the single core performance of the strongest Megachip KX-U6780A is only 44% of that of i5-7400.
According to the news, in January 2022, Shanghai Megachip predicted in advance that it would release one server chip and one desktop processor chip each this year. According to the previously announced route, it should be the KX-7000 series with a brand new CPU microarchitecture, possibly using a 7-nanometer process technology. Moreover, according to the company, the goal is to reach the level of AMD during the same period.
At the same time, ARM architecture has also begun to rise, and Apple computers have shifted to ARM architecture. Microsoft has also announced its support for ARM architecture, which means that the Wintel ecosystem in the past will face collapse, and the X86 architecture is no longer a panacea.
02
ARM architecture: from 0.5 to 1
According to the different instruction sets (also known as architecture or ISA), CPUs are divided into different schools. Over the past 50 years, many instruction sets have also emerged, but some participants have either transitioned from prosperity to decline, gradually fading out of the market, or just emerging from the market, unable to shoulder the heavy responsibilities yet. At present, the market has formed a situation where x86 instruction sets represented by Intel and AMD account for the majority of the market share, while ARM instruction sets account for a small portion of the market share.
In 2012, Arm officially launched its first 64 bit instruction set processor architecture, ARMv8, hoping to enter new fields such as servers. Since then, Feiteng has decisively abandoned SPARC, won the authorization of ARMv8 instruction set architecture, and turned to the Arm camp.
Since Apple abandoned x86 and launched M1, it has brought ARM to life. Nowadays, the potential demonstrated by the ARM instruction set in the chip localization movement has also attracted a large amount of capital to enter, such as Feiteng. In January 2023, according to Feiteng, since Feiteng started software compatibility mutual certification work in 2019, as of the end of 2022, more than 3000 domestic software products have completed compatibility and adaptation certification with Feiteng. We have built the most comprehensive and massive end-to-end information construction ecosystem in China, which is a major step towards addressing the shortcomings of domestic CPUs and breaking the “bottleneck” blockade.
In December 2020, the new generation 8-core desktop processor, the Feiteng Tengrui D2000, developed by the Feiteng embedded research and development team, was officially released. It integrates 8 independently developed high-performance processor cores, FTC663, and adopts a disordered four emission superscalar pipeline. It is compatible with the 64 bit ARMV8 instruction set and supports two execution modes, ARM64 and ARM32. It supports single precision and double precision floating-point operations and ASIMD processing instructions, and hardware virtualization. The D2000’s performance is on par with international advanced levels, further improving its safety. The sales of the Feiteng Tengrui D2000 processor in the market have exceeded 3 million chips, making it a widely recognized independent desktop CPU in the current information and innovation market.
But now facing sanctions from the United States, what if domestic manufacturers cannot obtain an upgraded version of the ARM architecture? A reporter from Semiconductor Industry Horizon interviewed the staff of Feiteng about this issue. She believes that the improvement of ARM’s latest architecture v10 is not significant compared to v9. “V9 is sufficient and we are permanently buying it out, so the current environment is not a threat to us. Our products have also entered the core field.” According to reports, the largest information and innovation project currently is the Golden Tax Phase IV, which serves 25 million enterprise users and 280 million individual users, After switching from x86 to Feiteng, the performance has increased by more than three times.
The great advantage of a domestically produced system is to optimize it at the system level “according to local conditions”, and improve the chip, machine, and operating system together, which is the advantage of the national system. Although there are many advantages, to be honest, our domestic substitution still does not reach “1”. Xinchuang equipment may be replaced in three years, and Feiteng’s business has also made corresponding adjustments, starting to conquer the sinking market and enter rural and county areas. Although the financial pressure is relatively high, Q1 is currently much better than last year, gradually shifting from being pushed to being sought after.
03
RISC-V: A New Domestic Favorite?
RISC-V, as a relatively new instruction set, has certain technological advantages, but the biggest reason for its popularity in China is that this instruction set is open source and free, and chips designed based on this instruction set do not need to be taxed by Intel and ARM for scientific research and commercial purposes. At present, common instruction sets on the market are chargeable, such as Huawei Kirin chips, which purchase ARM’s instruction set. These companies with instruction set intellectual property rights are all foreign companies, which is very unfavorable for China to achieve independent control of key chips. At present, there are already many RISC-V core RTL codes both domestically and internationally, many of which are open source. If you are interested, you can download a research study. Several well-known examples, such as Rocket Core, Boom Core, and LowRISC SoC, all provide source code. If used for commercial purposes, many commercial companies both domestically and internationally provide stable RISC-V IP cores. For example, foreign companies such as SiFive, Microsemi, domestic companies such as Alibaba Pingtouge, and Xinlai Technology.
The emergence of RISC-V has actually brought tremendous pressure to its direct competitor ARM, to the extent that ARM company one day had a sudden idea and secretly launched a domain named http://riscv-basics.com Our website is specifically designed to hack RISC-V. Then RISC-V counterattacked and launched a domain named http://arm-basics.com The website counterattacked and went back. Finally, this matter was announced offline by an ARM spokesperson http://riscv-basics.com End. From this, it can be seen that RISC-V has an impact on traditional manufacturers.
On March 26th, at the 10th Open Source Operating System Annual Technical Conference (OS2ATC) held in Beijing, the world’s first RISC-V laptop ROMA officially released this exciting news. This computer is equipped with the domestic operating system OpenKylin by default, which is considered a key factor in the development of China’s chip industry and a landmark event in the field of domestic operating systems.
ROMA, led by the RISC-V Foundation, is the world’s first native RISC-V development laptop developed by Deep Digital Intelligence and debugged by Jianshi Technology. Its birth signifies the official launch of OpenKylin and its acceptance of market and user testing. The three entities involved in the development are all strategic partners from the openKylin community.
RISC-V, as an open source instruction set, is seen as the third path for China’s chip industry after x86 and ARM architectures, providing us with new options for building a national information security foundation. Many people believe that the RISC-V architecture may be the key to the rise of Chinese chips. Ni Guangnan, an academician of the CAE Member, once pointed out that RISC-V architecture should become the new focus of domestic technology enterprises.
At present, China has increasingly attached importance to open source. In the 14th Five Year Plan for 2021, support for the development of digital technology open source was included in the national strategic plan for the first time. This has entered a new stage in China’s open source industry, and China’s contribution to open source will continue to grow in the future.
OpenHarmony’s open source is an important milestone in the development of open source in China, and its development is very rapid. According to statistics, there are currently 300 million Huawei devices and over 2000 ecological partners in HarmonyOS.
OpenEuler is another example of an excellent open source community in the Chinese industry, targeting server operating systems. In 2019, the OpenEuler open source project was released. Currently, the number of contributors to the OpenEuler open source community has reached 9396, with global downloads in 120 countries, 1500 cities, 550000 downloads, and 96 professional groups. It has become one of the most concerned open source projects for developers worldwide, and Chinese companies have made significant contributions to the OpenEuler community. This fully demonstrates that open source is a product of the times and a manifestation of the spirit of scientific communication.
Open source not only can better promote technological progress, but also is an effective way for China to accelerate its integration into world innovation. The open source model has also moved from the software field to the hardware field. In recent years, a new type of open source RISC-V has provided an opportunity for China to take the initiative in the development of the chip industry. It was released by the University of California in 2010 and they have created a universal computer chip instruction set that not only lowers the threshold for entry into the chip industry, but also aligns with the technological development trend of the Internet of Things in the future.
At the same time, RISC-V adopts an open source model, and more and more countries, enterprises, universities, and research institutes are embracing RISC-V architecture. It is also of great significance for the development of China’s chip industry.