NVIDIA will discuss its experience with the RISC-V architecture, which has been used in its GPU microcontrollers for nine years, at the RISC-V Summit. Companies such as Google will discuss the advantages of RISC-V in AI chips. RISC-V is gaining traction year over year due to its free licensing and flexibility, making it a cheaper and faster option for enterprises to design CPUs.
The RISC-V summit is about to be held, and tech giants have taken a stand
The RISC-V summit will be held on October 22-24, and the summit has attracted the attention of many tech giants. Nvidia, a leader in GPU manufacturing, has been using the RISC-V CPU architecture in its products for nine years. At the summit, Nvidia Vice President Frans Sijstermans will deliver a keynote speech that is expected to reveal more details about how Nvidia leverages the RISC-V architecture. At the same time, Google will also send staff to discuss the advantages of RISC-V in AI chips, especially how its TPU can be designed based on the RISC-V architecture.
In addition to Nvidia and Google, Qualcomm announced a long-term commitment to RISC-V at last year's summit, and Meta also shared details of RISC-V design. The statements of these companies show that the influence of RISC-V architecture in the industry is growing year on year. RISC-V's open instruction set architecture, which can be licensed for free and provides customers with the flexibility to add its functionality to the chip, is a big reason for its preference. In addition, Apple also uses RISC-V microcontrollers in its M-series CPUs, and Samsung ported its TizenOS to the RISC-V architecture. All these initiatives have further promoted the application and development of RISC-V.
RISC-V: 17 billion units to be shipped in 2030
While RISC-V continues to grow in the industry, it also faces some challenges. First of all, RISC-V's software support is relatively poor, which is why some companies are taking a wait-and-see attitude towards it. At the summit, it is expected that some discussions will focus on package and operating system support to drive further development of RISC-V.
Secondly, security issues are also an important issue that RISC-V needs to face. Last year's summit did not address security issues, but this year it was on the agenda. Researchers have disclosed a number of RISC-V-related hacks, which have raised concerns about RISC-V security in the industry. At the political level, in particular, United States politicians are concerned that China's doubling down on the structure could pose security risks. They fear that Chinese companies could threaten national security by shipping RISC-V chips with backdoors to United States equipment.
Despite these challenges, RISC-V still has great prospects for development. Research firm Omdia predicts that RISC-V-based processor shipments could reach 17 billion units by 2030. Among them, the automotive field will be one of the important markets for RISC-V applications. In addition, RISC-V International also believes that RISC-V will gradually be applied to the server and PC fields, although this may take several years.