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.
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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.
“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.
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.