The first Xuantie RISC-V Ecological Conference was held in Shanghai, and China's RISC-V ecosystem has begun to take shape

On March 2, the first Xuantie RISC-V Ecological Conference organized by Alibaba Pingtouge was held in Shanghai. With the theme of "Openness and Connection", the conference brought together representatives from hundreds of companies and institutions around the world, including Intel, Google, Canonical, Imagination, Haier, Alipay, NetEase Youdao, and Skyworth Kukai, to become the largest RISC-V development event in China. The biggest meeting ever. After about five years of construction, China’s RISC-V ecosystem has begun to take shape. Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said at the meeting that today RISC-V is the most popular architecture in China's CPU field and has become a new engine to promote the development of a new generation of information technology.

(Picture: Xuantie RISC-V Ecology Conference venue, Academician Ni Guangnan delivers a speech)

Instruction set architecture is the key technology for communication between software and hardware. The deep integration of Intel's x86 architecture and Microsoft's Windows operating system has ushered in the PC era, while the ecological prosperity of ARM's architecture and Google's Android has pushed human society into the mobile Internet era. With the advent of the intelligent era of the Internet of Everything, the open, concise, and modular RISC-V architecture has emerged, moving from terminals to the cloud, and is expected to develop into the third largest architecture ecosystem. In 2022, 10 billion processors using the RISC-V architecture have been shipped, and some data predict that the number will exceed 80 billion by 2025.

Thanks to the booming development of China's smart applications and market, chip companies represented by Pingtou Ge took the lead in the RISC-V wave. "The vigorous development of RISC-V requires global innovation collaboration. From the chip ecology, to the basic software ecology, to the application and terminal ecology, Pingtou Ge is connecting the major ecosystems so that developers and partners around the world can better Use and develop RISC-V technology effectively,” Meng Jianyi, vice president of Pingtouge, said at the conference.

(Caption: At the Xuantie RISC-V Ecological Conference, Meng Jianyi, Vice President of Pingtou Ge, delivered a speech)

In the research and development of RISC-V processors and chips, Pingtou Ge has launched 8 RISC-V processors in 3 major series, covering the needs of high performance, high energy efficiency, real-time reliability and other scenarios. It is the most widely used RISC-V mass-produced chip. processor. At this conference, Canaan Technology launched the world's first commercial mass production chip K230 that supports the RISC-V Vector1.0 standard; Shuneng launched a 64-core RISC-V server chip. The cooperation with Pingtou Ge moved from embedded chip mass production to A comprehensive exploration of cloud chips. Xie Xiaoqing, vice president of Intel's Software and Advanced Technology Division, said in his speech that Intel's IFS plan will provide semiconductor foundry manufacturing services to support various chips including RISC-V, and will further promote open source software and promote ecological innovation.

The integration of RISC-V chip ecology and basic software ecology such as operating systems is accelerating. Pingtou Ge has basically completed the full adaptation of international and domestic mainstream operating systems and RISC-V, including Android, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Dragon Lizard, Tongxin, openKylin, Skyworth Coocai system, RTT and other operating systems. This means that RISC-V is fully capable of undertaking software applications through different operating systems such as cloud, desktop, and terminal, and upper-layer application developers can smoothly achieve architectural compatibility with zero code. Lars Bergstrom, Google's director of Android engineering, said at the meeting that the first work he had seen to make the Android system truly run on RISC-V hardware came from Pingtou Ge, and the contributions from the Asia-Pacific region have strongly promoted the development of open source projects.

At the level of software tools and applications, Pingtouge launched for the first time a complete three-piece set of basic software - compiler TAC, compilation environment CDK, and deployment tool set HHB, which greatly improves the efficiency of the RISC-V development environment and tool stack. At the same time, based on the adapted openKylin operating system, RISC-V ran through the large-scale commercial IM (instant messaging) tool DingTalk for the first time; Skyworth Kukai ran the industry's first TV-side WebOS on the RISC-V architecture, allowing billion-level There are new choices for smart terminals; the close cooperation between NetEase Youdao and Pingtou Ge has allowed technological innovation to break through the barriers of software and hardware, creating a new integrated ecosystem on smart hardware such as dictionary pens; Haier and Pingtou Ge are exploring in the field of smart home appliances RISC-V application implementation.

The vigorous development of the RISC-V ecosystem calls for the unification of instruction set standards. Chinese companies have played a key role in promoting the construction of RISC-V international standards. Calista Redmond, CEO of the RISC-V International Foundation, introduced at the meeting that 12 of the 22 senior members of the foundation are from China. In the construction of international standards, Pingtou Ge led 11 major technical groups and promoted the formulation of standards in 29 technical directions. He is recognized as the Chinese institution with the largest investment. Brother Pingtou received the world’s first architecture compatibility test certificate. In addition, Pingtou Ge continues to promote the RVV1.0 architecture standard, the new Matrix matrix standard for artificial intelligence, and the RISC-V security technology standard.

(Caption: Brother Pingtou obtained the world’s first architecture compatibility certificate) 

At the Xuantie RISC-V Ecological Conference, Alibaba Pingtou Ge announced the ecological plan. For the 150,000 developers in the chip open community, Pingtouge launched the online learning platform "RISC-V Academy Plan" for the first time to encourage participation in global RVFA certification. For industry partners, Pingtou Ge launched the "Xuantie Preferred Chip" plan to promote the implementation of ecological chips; at the same time, it set up the "Xuantie Preferred Partner", and the first batch was awarded to Quanzhi Technology, Aipte, Shuneng, Boliu Intelligence, and Qingwei Eight companies including Intelligent, Yunzhisheng, Jiangxinchuang, and AFP IoT recognized their outstanding contributions to the RISC-V ecosystem.

Meng Jianyi introduced: "Open source and openness are the core of RISC-V ecological construction. Alibaba Pingtou Ge will also continue to connect developers and different partners in the ecosystem, promote the integration of RISC-V ecology and the broader ecological system, and share inclusive benefits with all walks of life. The dividends of computing power technology continue to contribute to the open ecosystem and community.”

David Patterson, the father of RISC-V and winner of the Turing Award, witnessed the vigorous development of the RISC-V ecosystem. He said at the meeting: "RISC-V is a global phenomenon, with developers in more than 60 countries studying it. In Asia, many well-known companies, academic institutions, and industry associations are actively participating, from embedded to various types of computers, and finally to mainframes. I think RISC-V will be everywhere in 3 to 5 years!”

(Caption: China’s RISC-V ecosystem has begun to take shape)