Ni Guangnan: China may make a breakthrough in the direction of open source chips

According to China Economic Weekly, on November 3, at the 2020 World Computer Conference held in Changsha, Hunan, Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that China may make breakthroughs in the direction of open source chips and circumvent restrictive policies that the United States may adopt.

Image source: Xiaoxiang Morning News

According to Xiaoxiang Morning News, Ni Guangnan believes that in terms of industrial capacity, most of China's industries are still leading in the world, but some industries are global in nature, such as integrated circuits and chip products, which are not something that any country can do casually. Under the special international situation, the unilateralism and trade protectionism of the United States restrict certain industries controlled by the United States, such as prohibiting purchases and supplies. We have to cope with the situation. On the one hand, we must strengthen our own strengths so that our industries can better form a close interdependence with international industries. In addition, we also have to do some of our obvious shortcomings in order to prevent "stuck necks".

Ni Guangnan believes that the difficulty of open source chips lies in the high threshold. Generally speaking, the investment and allocation of a 14-nanometer chip usually costs hundreds of millions of dollars. Only a few large companies can make good investments in chips. Because the investment is so large, most people are not willing to open source.

However, Ni Guangnan also pointed out that although open source chips are very difficult, we can learn from the successful experience of open source software to achieve breakthroughs, and we have already seen a good start. It is reported that the RISC-V Foundation, which focuses on open source chips, has already started joint development with the Chinese team.

"As far as China is concerned, historical experience shows that we can generally do what we want to do. For example, GPS was monopolized at the beginning, and then we developed Beidou. After these years of development, I think the current Beidou navigation is better than GPS. For example, when higher lane precision is required, Beidou's practicality exceeds that of GPS. Our experience shows that if we have to make up for these shortcomings, it may not be the most suitable from the perspective of economic principles, and not every country needs to do it. But if necessary, being forced to do it will not be difficult for us. We have the world's largest market and our own internal circulation as support, so we can do it. If necessary, we can make up for these shortcomings."