RISC-V

2023

Russian developers are preparing chips based on RISC-V architecture

On October 11, 2023, it became known that the RISC-V Alliance, whose board includes representatives of Baikal Electronics, Sintakor and Aquarius, has prepared a roadmap for the development of RISC-V architecture in Russia. It is expected that domestic developers will begin a trial release of such microchips in 2025. The appearance of these products will reduce dependence on foreign processors, the supply of which to the Russian Federation is limited due to the current geopolitical situation.

According to the Kommersant newspaper, we are talking about the creation of domestic high-performance chips with open RISC-V architecture for computing and telecommunications. At least three Russian companies intend to organize the production of such chips, including Yadro and Baikal Electronics. Serial production is scheduled to begin in 2026.

RISC-V Alliance has prepared a roadmap for the development of RISC-V architecture in Russia

Companies designing microelectronics based on RISC-V participate in alliances, in particular RISC-V International, to synchronize development. However, a number of congressmen are pressuring the administration of US President Biden to impose export control measures on RISC-V technology. If the restrictions apply to Russia, domestic developers may lose the opportunity to take part in international RISC-V alliances and in meetings of technical committees. And this means that domestic design centers will be forced to comply with technical standards adopted without their participation.

At the same time, market participants believe that developers from the Russian Federation will find a way to bypass possible restrictions. Thus, the general director of Beshtau Oleg Osipov notes that if the representative of the Russian developer is no longer allowed to participate in the technical committees, "nothing will hurt to establish a legal entity formally unrelated to him in Hong Kong and delegate a representative of this company to the committees of international alliances."^[1]

The world's largest chipmakers have created a company to develop the open architecture RISC-V

On August 4, 2023, Qualcomm, NXP Semiconductors, Infineon Technologies, Nordic Semiconductor and Bosch announced the formation of an alliance to develop the RISC-V open processor architecture. Read more here.

2022

Aquarius will develop processors based on RISC-V architecture

On October 10, 2022, it became known about the plans of Aquarius to develop processors based on the open RISC-V architecture. The company intends to receive subsidies from the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Read more here.

An alliance of software and equipment developers based on the RISC-V microarchitecture has been created in Russia

At the end of September 2022, it became known Russia that the Association of Independent Software and Computer Developers based on microarchitecture (RISC-V RISC-V Alliance) was created. The founder of the organization, according to data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, was the president, Big Data Associations Anna Serebryanikova former top manager and member of the board of directors of PJSC "." MegaFon More. here

Russia plans to create a national center of competence for the processor architecture RISC-V

At the Mephius full-cycle microelectronics design center, which is to be launched on the basis of NRNU MEPhI in September 2022, it is planned to create a national competence center for the RISC-V processor architecture. This was announced on June 8 at the signing of an agreement with IT companies on the creation of a design center by its deputy director Vladislav Samoilov.

The prerequisites for this was that in the Russian market now few companies are engaged in RISC-V, while this architecture is becoming more and more relevant: it is one of the few that can now be worked with in Russia, especially due to the blocking of access to the ARM architecture by local processor developers against the background of sanctions^[2].

The competence center is planned to be created to accumulate expertise in the field of RISC-V, the development of separate educational programs on this architecture, for the transfer of technologies, Vladislav Samoilov explained.

Under sanctions in Russia, interest in RISC-V has grown even more

RISC-V is an open instruction set architecture that can be freely used, unlike the same ARM requiring license payment. The project began in 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley, and has since gained popularity worldwide. The RISC-V project Google Nvidia is now supported by many large companies, including, and Western Digital.

Some participants in the microelectronics design center, which is being created at NRNU MEPhI, interact with RISC-V developers. For example, Baikal Electronics, the developer of Baikal processors. Its new processors use one of the RISC-V cores that are being developed by the Russian company CloudBEAR, as announced at an event dedicated to signing an agreement on the creation of a design center. The Varton group, which acquired control in Baikal Electronics in mid-2021, bought a 34% stake in CloudBEAR in September of the same year.

Baikal Electronics also closely collaborated with Esperanto Technologies, where the founders of RISC-V themselves are present. They have already released their own energy-efficient 1000-core chip for artificial intelligence.

In July 2021, the media wrote about the interest in RISC-V from Rostec. The state corporation was going to develop a new domestic processor based on this architecture for use in computers for schools, universities and hospitals. Rostec specialists gathered to work on the chip together with employees of the Russian company Yadro, which, among other things, is developing servers and data storage systems^[3]. However, since then nothing else has been heard about the project.

And in November 2021, the Micron company released an experimental batch of a domestic microcontroller based on the RISC-V^[4] architecture^[5].

Russian processor developments based on RISC-V can support the state. So, the day before the plans for the creation of the RISC-V competence center were announced at the NRNU MEPhI, the head of the Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev expressed confidence that the state will soon allocate a serious budget to support domestic processor developments on this architecture^[6]

I must say that, despite the openness of RISC-V, the risk that Russia may try to restrict access to it in one form or another also exists. On May 7, in an interview with The Register, this was directly hinted at by Calista Redmond, CEO of the non-profit organization RISC-V International. She stated that the organization "does not have to block anyone's participation," but if things go along the path of imposing tougher sanctions at the country level, then it may have to change the approach^[7].

Russian developers have already encountered blocking resources from Open Source amid sanctions. In March, disputes began in the community about whether it is worth restricting Russians access to GitHub, and already in April GitHub began blocking the accounts of Russian companies and developers^[8].

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