RISC-V Catalyst for Change

Disruptions and plot twists are nothing new in the silicon industry. We’ve experienced full lifecycles from launch to exit. Pivots have been made in large architectures and small niche markets as the industry seeks better solutions to take on new workloads or improve competitive positions. Industry disruption holds the promise for all of us to take new approaches, engage with trusted partners, and solve complex challenges. With any disruption, there are discussions about the ripple effects on the industry. Today, many people are wondering whether companies will be investing more heavily in RISC-V as a result of our open model for licensing and collaboration or due to the potential limits placed by companies or nations on proprietary architectures. RISC-V is free and open so no single entity controls the technology. Companies, academia and institutions have freedom to innovate on the architecture and collectively can help to shape this rapidly evolving frontier of computing.

There is already a critical mass of more than 200 companies adopting RISC-V and actively contributing to the ecosystem from 50 countries, and that interest and investment in RISC-V will continue to grow from here. Many companies will look more closely at RISC-V for next generation designs, if they aren’t already. RISC-V is a great way for organizations to diversify their product portfolios, and it also offers a number of design advantages. The simple and extensible design of RISC-V makes it ideal for cutting-edge AI, automotive, cloud, edge computing, IoT, machine learning, mobile and 5G applications.

Like any industry, choice and freedom are critical. Choice drives healthy competition and innovation, while creating balanced relationships with innovation partners, suppliers, and customers. RISC-V stakeholders have choices too and our community is made up of organizations across the silicon industry who have invested in multiple architectures. We anticipate that our member companies will continue to rely on legacy architectures for certain product lines, while also looking to RISC-V to meet the increasingly complex workload requirements of next generation applications. After all, change doesn’t happen overnight, and companies have already invested heavily in existing product lines and architectures with a commitment to those products. However, with each generation of technology, we see companies taking a deeper look at available architectures and are honored that RISC-V is a formidable option.

We’re working hard to build out a robust and invested community across industries, domains, stakeholders and geographies. RISC-V has committed to offering more development support through our 37 technical work groups, hundreds of tools and resources, visibility programs, training partners, dozens of university curriculum components and more to enable RISC-V designs, industry workloads, operating systems, hardware implementations and development tools to scale faster. We’re excited about the incredible progress of RISC-V in shaping the silicon industry, and we look forward to seeing how our global community continues to build on RISC-V to accelerate innovation and adoption.

推动改变的RISC-V催化剂

在半导体行业，颠覆性故事和曲折的情节并不陌生。我们经常见证一个企业或一代产品从出现到消亡的整个生命周期。为应对新兴负载或提高竞争力，行业会寻求更好的解决方案，这驱动大众架构和小众市场汇聚到某个中心。行业中出现的颠覆让所有人有望获得新方法，找到信赖的盟友，解决复杂的问题。任何颠覆出现时，人们都会讨论它对于行业产生的连锁反应。如今，许多人想知道未来企业是否该在RISC-V上投入更多资金，一方面因为公司拥有的私有指令集可能会受到企业或国家的潜在限制，另一方面因为RISC-V倡导的开放许可和协作模式具有吸引力。RISC-V是免费且开放的，因此没有任何一个实体可以控制RISC-V技术。公司、学术界和机构都可以自由地在RISC-V指令集架构上进行创新，共同推动迅速发展的计算前沿。

目前，来自50多个国家超过200家企业已在使用RISC-V，为构建RISC-V生态做出了积极贡献，而对RISC-V的关注和投资也将会持续增长。许多当前尚未采用RISC-V的公司，也将会更加关注如何把RISC-V应用到它们的下一代产品中。对于企业与机构而言，RISC-V具有许多设计优势，是使产品组合多样化的一种好方法。RISC-V简单且可扩展的设计，能使其成为人工智能、汽车、云计算、边缘计算、物联网、机器学习、移动和5G等前沿应用的理想选择。

像任何行业一样，选择和自由至关重要。选择推动了良性竞争及创新，并为创新合作伙伴、供应商和客户建立了一种平衡关系。我们的社区已覆盖半导体行业中的各类企业与机构，虽然它们也有选择其他指令集架构，但加入RISC-V社区则让它们拥有了更多一种选择。我们预计，对于一些产品，我们的成员公司还会使用传统指令集架构；但与此同时，它们也会开始规划采用RISC-V来满足下一代应用日益复杂的需求。当然，改变不是一朝一夕的事，毕竟企业在现有的产品和传统指令集架构上已经投入了大量资金。但是，随着每一代技术的发展，我们很荣幸地看到企业在深入调研各种已有指令集架构后，仍然将RISC-V作为一个强大的选择。

我们正在努力构建一个健康发展的跨越行业、领域、投资和地区的社区。RISC-V国际基金会已有37个技术工作组、数百种工具和资源、推广计划、培训合作伙伴、数十种大学课程等等，这些将会加速RISC-V在指令集设计、企业负载、操作系统、硬件实现和开发工具等方面的进度。我们为RISC-V在半导体行业已取得的惊人进展感到振奋，并期待全世界继续加速基于RISC-V的创新与应用。