Powerful cooperation takes the lead in creating RISC-V "China Chip" smart energy solution

Strong alliance to take the lead in creating RISC-V "China Chip" smart energy solutions, Saifang Technology, Honghua Smart Energy and Winut reached a strategic cooperation

 Under the guidance of the national "3060" dual carbon strategy, the energy industry is facing a major change that has not been seen in a century, with both opportunities and challenges. The transformation and innovation of the traditional energy industry ultimately depends on technological innovation. As a leading urban gas service provider, Towngas changed its name to Towngas Smart Energy on November 26, once again leading the industry and starting the process of accelerating the transformation to a smart energy solution provider using the self-controlled RISC-V Chinese chip.

On December 6, Honghua Smart Energy , RISC-V software and hardware ecosystem leader Saifang Technology Co., Ltd., and China's leading industrial control network security company Beijing Winut Technology Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Shenzhen. The three parties announced that they will work together to create industrial Internet security products and zero-carbon smart energy solutions based on RISC-V "China Core".

Specifically, this strategic cooperation mainly focuses on two aspects. First, in terms of gas pipeline intelligent systems and network security, Saifang Technology and Winut will jointly develop industrial Internet security products with completely independent intellectual property rights based on Saifang's self-developed Fang Jinghong 7000 series SoC chips. This RISC-V-based industrial-grade network security product will be promoted to cover urban gas projects across the country in the future, helping Hong Kong and China Smart Energy to improve the security protection capabilities of the gas pipeline system, consolidate the data security of the infrastructure, and escort the creation of smart gas. Second, in the direction of zero-carbon smart energy, the parties will jointly develop zero-carbon smart energy solutions based on Fang Jinghong 7000 series SoC chips, jointly promote the common, sharing and co-creation of talents, technologies, platforms, resources, etc., and further promote the research and development of a series of smart energy hardware products with independent intellectual property rights such as edge servers, intelligent control terminals, intelligent gateways, and data collectors based on RISC-V chips, forming a complete zero-carbon smart energy solution. These two major cooperation directions will promote the application of "China Chip" in various scenarios of Hong Kong and China Smart Energy, and take an important step in the RISC-V open source chip to enter high-end applications.

 "Facing the national 'dual carbon' development goals, Hong Kong Smart Energy took the lead in responding. Under the leadership of Dr. Li Jiajie, Chairman of the company, it has clarified the three major development strategies of integrated energy solutions, digitalization and decarbonization, explored the use of technology to achieve the transformation to smart energy and clean energy, and provided carbon management, power trading, energy efficiency management and other solutions for industrial and commercial customers to help users accelerate the process of carbon neutrality, which is inseparable from the support of underlying digital technology." Chen Wenjian, senior vice president of Hong Kong Smart Energy, said at the signing ceremony that the company has 304 urban pipeline gas projects in the mainland, of which more than 133 are directly invested and 171 are reinvested, serving more than 40 million customers, with 116 smart energy projects in 21 provinces and cities across the country. This time, Hong Kong Smart Energy took the lead in joining hands with Saifang Technology and Winut Company to apply the domestically independently innovated underlying chip technology to smart energy products and solutions, which will be implemented in Hong Kong Smart Energy's projects in the future. This also demonstrates Hong Kong Smart Energy's investment in innovative technology and its determination to provide users with high-quality services.

Dr. Li Jiajie, member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hong Kong Smart Energy, has long seen the development prospects of RISC-V open source chips. As the co-founder of Saifang Technology, he has invested in Saifang Technology and supported its development since the angel round. As a chip company with leading technical strength and R&D capabilities in the RISC-V field, Saifang Technology has successively launched the world's first RISC-V -based AI single-board computer, the world's first RISC-V-based Fang Jinghong 7000 series artificial intelligence and image processing platform, and the world's most comprehensive high-performance RISC-V CPU IP Fang Tianshu processor core, which supports the most instructions, and gradually achieved full coverage from RISC-V cores, processor chips to software ecology. Driven by Dr. Li Jiajie, this cooperation will create a precedent for the application of RISC-V "China Core" in the smart energy industry.

Saifang Technology has leading RISC-V chip technology, Honghua Smart Energy has a wide range of application scenarios, and Winut is a leader in the field of industrial network security products. The cooperation of these three not only provides a good model of technological innovation for the zero-carbon transformation of energy, but also provides a good cooperation model for national technological innovation practices.

Promoting technological innovation through cross-border cooperation is particularly important for the development of the RISC-V industry. For a long time, RISC-V chips have been mainly used in relatively low-end scenarios due to various factors such as late start of technology, insufficient ecological resources, and limited application scenarios. The progress of high-end applications and development is slow. This time, through in-depth strategic cooperation with Hong Kong and China Smart Energy, Saifang Technology has opened up new application scenarios for "domestic chips" on the one hand, which is an important breakthrough for RISC-V chips to move towards high-end applications. On the other hand, it also helps to further improve the RISC-V ecosystem.

In this regard, Xu Tao, co-founder and CEO of Saifang Technology, said at the signing ceremony: "We are very pleased to cooperate with two industry leaders in the field of smart energy. Honghua Smart Energy is an industry-leading energy company with 304 urban pipeline gas projects in the Mainland, serving more than 40 million customers and 116 smart energy projects. As a leading domestic industrial control network security company, Winut has rich experience in industrial-grade network security products. This strategic cooperation is a very good training opportunity for Saifang Technology, and will provide rich and high-quality landing scenarios for domestic RISC-V companies to verify the technology landing capabilities. Saifang Technology will continue to work hard to promote the improvement of the RISC-V ecosystem, open up more application scenarios for RISC-V, and promote the "China Core" to become the core chip base for China's smart energy products." 

It is reported that the RISC-V SoC chip used by Saifang Technology for the tripartite strategic cooperation project, Fang Jinghong 7000, is equipped with a multi-core 64-bit RISC-V CPU core, has a wealth of high-speed interfaces, and has the characteristics of high performance and low power consumption. It can complete various complex video image processing and intelligent visual computing, and can meet a variety of real-time visual processing needs at the edge. Its application in smart energy scenarios will provide a good demonstration effect for RISC-V to enter high-end scenarios.

It is worth noting that in this cooperation, Beijing Winut Technology Co., Ltd., a leading domestic industrial control network security company and one of the six companies in the world that have won the ISASecure CRT Tool certification from the International Automation Association Security and Compliance Society, will provide strong support for the integration of RISC-V technology and industrial control security products. Winut Chairman and CEO Long Guodong introduced that Winut has the top domestic industrial control security senior technical team, insists on independent research and development and technological innovation as its core competitiveness, and has successfully provided comprehensive and effective security protection for more than 2,000 industrial enterprises in important industries in the country. The energy industry is an important industry for the application of industrial Internet and a national key information infrastructure. Winut has accumulated rich practical experience in the energy industry. In the future, it will work closely with the two partners to ensure the domestic research and development of industrial control network security products from the core link of the chip, and truly implement the transformation requirements of the industrial Internet to be intelligent and secure.

Dr. Li Jiajie is full of expectations for the strategic cooperation between the three parties. He said: "The 'dual carbon' goal is a difficult and complex task for the country, which can only be achieved through deep integration and collaborative innovation across industries. In the future, the three parties will uphold the spirit of openness, inclusiveness, interconnection and sharing, break the information islands and technical barriers in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and jointly promote the localization of key technologies of smart energy solutions, truly contributing to the high-quality development of China's economy and the realization of the 'dual carbon' goal."