On August 3, the 2022 Fourth Automotive Electronics Conference kicked off in Jiashan, Zhejiang. At the opening forum, Academician Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, stated that RISC-V can well meet the era’s demand for “demand-defined software and software-defined hardware,” making it the ideal choice for intelligent connected vehicle chips. China should seize the development opportunities of the new generation of information technology and focus on the development of the open-source RISC-V architecture to advance the domestic automotive chip industry.
The global automotive industry is booming, and market competition is unpredictable. The domestic automotive industry has created a world industry miracle over the past few years. Ni Guangnan pointed out that China now possesses the world’s largest, most complete, and well-supported automotive industrial system and a super-sized market, making it a major global automotive production base and sales market, as well as the largest frontier for technological innovation and advanced technology applications. Today, a new round of technological and industrial revolutions is accelerating, with new energy and intelligent connectivity becoming the new goals for industrial development.
Regarding the development trend of intelligent connected vehicles, Ni Guangnan stated that intelligent connected vehicles transform traditional cars into new-generation vehicles that serve as intelligent mobile spaces and application terminals by utilizing new-generation information technology. Currently, intelligent connected vehicles have become a key focus for national emerging industries and a major research and development direction for vehicle manufacturers.
The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is one of the key technologies for the development of the automotive industry, and its architecture is an essential component of the chip industry chain and ecosystem. Ni Guangnan indicated that by promoting the development of automotive chips, cars are becoming giant mobile computers mounted on four wheels. Computers rely on CPU architecture because it not only determines the performance of the CPU chip itself but also significantly influences the entire chip industry and ecosystem, especially in terms of talent cultivation, design tools (EDA), chip IP libraries, and chip application ecosystems.
Ni Guangnan mentioned that in recent years, domestic CPU development has progressed rapidly, and various domestic CPU architectures coexist in the market. However, this is not a long-term solution due to the strong monopolistic nature of CPU architectures. For a long time, the main market share of CPUs (also known as “mainstream CPUs”) has been held by only two architectures, x86 and ARM, a situation that is likely to continue. Thus, the current coexistence of various domestic CPU architectures may lead to resource dispersion and low-level duplication issues in the future. If this situation is not improved, China will lack local CPU architectures capable of competing with x86 and ARM in the global market in a few years.
In recent years, the rapidly rising open-source RISC-V architecture CPU has provided an opportunity for China to develop mainstream CPUs. Ni Guangnan pointed out that the rapid development of RISC-V is due to its unique scalable reduced instruction set architecture and the relaxed BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) open-source model. This not only significantly lowers the threshold for chip development but also breaks the long-standing monopoly in the chip industry.
“Science and technology are universal and timely; they are the common wealth of humanity,” Ni Guangnan stated. The open-source RISC-V not only aligns with the spirit of scientific openness but also fits the future technological development trend. In the era of intelligent connected vehicles, countless application scenarios are emerging, and people will usher in an era of “demand-defined software and software-defined hardware.” In this context, RISC-V can meet such demands well and is the ideal choice for intelligent connected vehicle chips.
In light of the above situation, Ni Guangnan suggested that China should seize the development opportunities of the new generation of information technology, focusing on the open-source RISC-V architecture to develop the domestic automotive chip industry. China’s national system, super-sized market advantages, and talent advantages will help significantly develop and strengthen the RISC-V industrial ecosystem. By increasing investment and contributions to the RISC-V open-source community, China’s intelligent connected vehicles are expected to achieve higher, faster, and stronger goals.