Who is responsible for the rapid rise of “domestic core”?

“You can’t build a house on someone else’s foundation.” for a chip, the architecture is similar to the foundation. Under the pressure of the crisis, China’s chip industry is undergoing new changes. The camp of independent innovation is gradually enriched, and the trial of new architecture is accelerated. In August, xinlai technology, the first risc-vip supplier in China, announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing, which was led by Xiaomi Changjiang Industrial Fund. Following this, Guangdong Kunpeng ecological conference was held in Guangzhou. The Kunpeng server jointly developed by Huawei and broadcast and TV express was released to the public, which solved the problem of no local server manufacturer in Guangzhou. < / P > < p > chip architecture, that is, instruction set architecture. Generally speaking, instruction set is like a whole set of language system. CPU can read and run programs and hardware according to requirements. Up to now, CPU mainly has two instruction sets: complex instruction set (CISC) architecture x86, and reduced instruction set (RISC) architecture camp includes arm, MIPs and risc-v. < / P > < p > with the dominant server x86 architecture, arm and risc-v are becoming the “Great Wall entrance” for domestic manufacturers to break through, and are regarded as an opportunity to change lanes and overtake. < / P > < p > at the 2020 global developer conference held in June, apple resolutely announced that it had “broken up” with its old partner Intel for 15 years, abandoning the traditional Intel CPU and switching to the arm architecture processor developed by itself. < / P > < p > this is not a case in point. In August, Kunpeng server of radio and television based on ARM architecture was officially released, providing a safe and reliable leading computing platform for independent innovation. < / P > < p > for a long time, more than 90% of the world’s server chip market is based on Intel’s x86 architecture, which has been in an absolute dominant position in the PC market. In the era of mobile Internet, especially the explosion of cloud computing, it needs to change to low power consumption and micro service. Arm architecture quickly dominates the mobile market share and gradually covets the share of PC. < / P > < p > “in the PC market, the market share of x86 architecture is too high, which is not conducive to the security of the supply chain. Almost all it manufacturers are trying to break the dominant pattern, including Google and Amazon, are developing servers based on ARM architecture.” An IC investor said that Huawei’s layout of arm architecture has set foot on the development trend and will provide a new choice for all it manufacturers in the world. < / P > < p > challenges Intel’s x86 architecture. If arm architecture rises at the turning point from PC era to mobile computing era, the Internet of things era is the soil for risc-v growth. < p > < p > risc-v, which is the same RISC instruction set architecture as arm, is an open source instruction set, so the CPU and operating system developed on this basis are not easy to encounter “neck jams”, so this architecture is considered to be comparable with arm. Ni Guangnan, academician of the Chinese Academy of engineering, also had high expectations for this when he looked forward to the future of open-source chips: “risc-v is likely to develop into one of the mainstream CPUs in the world, forming a pattern in which Intel x86, arm and risc-v dominate the CPU field.” For example, arm only authorizes chip designs and does not produce or sell chips, so it can sell technology to other companies without competition. < / P > < p > the situation is changing, Softbank intends to sell its shares in arm, and NVIDIA’s acquisition of arm has entered the final negotiation stage. This has raised new concerns about arm. < / P > < p > unlike Huawei’s prospective permanent buyout of arm’s V8 architecture, new forces are willing to try risc-v. The neutrality of risc-v has won more fans. In 2015, risc-v foundation was established. Its members include more than 300 global enterprises such as Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Samsung and Google, Ali, huami, etc. Zhong Dandan, a senior analyst at the integrated circuit Research Institute of saidI think tank, told the media that under the complex international situation, risc-v foundation has moved its headquarters to Switzerland, reflecting a neutral attitude. Under the background of closed source of mainstream instruction set x86 and high cost of arm authorization, the open-source risc-v instruction set specializes in emerging markets such as the Internet of things, forming dislocation competition with X86 and arm ecology, It is the potential power to break the monopoly of current processors. < / P > < p > different from Apple’s well-developed ecological migration arm, domestic manufacturers need to build new ecology steadily when they transform their architectures, whether they are arm or risc-v architecture. < / P > < p > even if Samsung has a strong chip production capacity and a large shipment volume provides a broad market application, Samsung still needs to use a large number of high pass chips in the end. One of the important reasons is that its chip exynos lacks ecology. < / P > < p > for the leading chip enterprises in China, building ecology is a new proposition. “In the past, Huawei was a product-oriented enterprise focusing on the R & D and production of server hardware, and was good at making its own products. Now it is a great change to turn to an ecological enterprise and share its capabilities with partners.” Zhang Xiwei, President of Huawei Kunpeng computing, said in an exclusive interview with Nanfang Daily. Zhang Xiwei, for example, said that it is very important to dispel the concerns of partners. Some partners have different abilities, and sometimes engineers will complain about why they can’t do it themselves. However, since we are doing ecology, we must do something and do nothing. In order to dispel the doubts of our partners, by June 2020, the sales of Kunpeng servers produced by our partners have exceeded the Taishan servers produced by Huawei. < p > < p > similarly, if risc-v is to become an architecture that can compete with and even replace arm, the biggest obstacle is the support of software ecology such as operating system and algorithm library. In contrast, x86 has Microsoft supported “Wintel” alliance, arm has Android supported “AA” alliance, and risc-v has not yet a unified operating system. < p > < p > Li Jue, strategic director of core technology, said frankly that risc-v is still in its warm-up period. Customers need to pay a certain amount of migration and learning cost to switch from the original ecology to risc-v, which has become one of the obstacles encountered in the popularization of risc-v. at present, various risc-v manufacturers adopt the strategy of following users’ habits to make the interface, compiler, operation interface and other soft environments as close as possible The usage habits of users who have used arm architecture for a long time.