Shanghai-based semiconductor start-up StarFive aims to boost adoption of its chips with the financial backing of the Hong Kong government, according to its founder, as China bets on the open-source RISC-V architecture to strengthen its chip industry amid escalating tensions with the US.
The six-year-old RISC-V chipmaker secured an undisclosed sum from the Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC), the government arm in charge of managing HK$62 billion (US$8 billion) of funds to foster innovation in the city, the two parties said on Friday.
The partnership would see Hong Kong support StarFive in rolling out RISC-V chip applications in the city, founder and CEO Thomas Xu Tao said in an interview.
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“RISC-V has moved beyond its initial phase of foundational research … Its current focus is on real-world applications,” Xu said. “Implementing use cases is actually really difficult in the early stages and needs government guidance.”
RISC-V, pronounced “risk five”, is an open-source instruction set architecture that allows developers to configure and customise their chip designs. It competes with Intel’s x86 and Arm Holdings’ architecture, which dominate the personal computer and smartphone markets, respectively.
China has been investing heavily on RISC-V, an open-source hardware instruction set architecture. Photo: Shutterstock alt=China has been investing heavily on RISC-V, an open-source hardware instruction set architecture. Photo: Shutterstock>
While RISC-V is not as widely used as Arm or x86, and most of its products still lag in performance, its open-source code base and energy efficiency have contributed to its growing popularity in recent years.
Chinese businesses and the government are hoping that RISC-V can reduce reliance on foreign suppliers as the US tightens export controls on advanced chip technology. Hong Kong has also pledged to develop its RISC-V industry to drive the city’s economic growth and secure a position in China’s semiconductor landscape.
“The design and application of RISC-V open-source chips is an important part of strategic planning of [Hong Kong’s] future,” the city’s finance chief Paul Chan Mo-po said in his weekly blog on Sunday.
StarFive’s Towngas Chip, a RISC-V processor launched in November 2022 in collaboration with the Hong Kong and China Gas Company (Towngas), is set to be deployed in smart gas metres across Hong Kong as early as the second quarter, according to Xu.
