When the domestic aircraft C929’s avionics system first equipped with the RISC-V chip independently developed in China, the era of “Chinese chips” in human aviation history officially began. In November 2025, COMAC and the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly announced that the chip has passed airworthiness certification and will be used in the flight control computer and avionics management system of the C929. This seemingly low-key technological breakthrough is, in fact, a milestone in China’s technological breakthrough—transitioning from being dependent to being self-controlled, China is reconstructing the aviation industry ecosystem using open-source architecture.
This RISC-V chip, codenamed “Tianshu,” achieves breakthroughs in three major dimensions:
1. Independent Architecture: Designed based on an open-source instruction set, breaking the monopoly of ARM/x86 architecture, with a domestic code localization rate of 100%.
2. Performance Benchmarking: Single-core performance reaches 2.5GHz, with floating-point computing capabilities exceeding mainstream aviation chips by 30%, supporting real-time multitasking.
3. Safety Redundancy: Achieved ASIL-D level functional safety certification, with an error detection coverage rate of 99.999%, capable of withstanding extreme environments from -55°C to 125°C.
This breakthrough is reshaping the aviation industry chain:
Supply Chain Restructuring: The 28nm process chip provided by the 14th Institute of China Electronics Technology Group has been mass-produced, increasing the self-sufficiency rate of domestic avionics components to 65%.
Cost Control: The manufacturing cost of the chip is reduced by 40% compared to imported products, with the cost of the avionics system for a single C929 reduced by 120 million yuan.
Technology Diffusion: The RISC-V architecture has been included in the upgrade plan for the domestic regional aircraft ARJ21, with a certain general aviation company developing a new avionics system using it.
While Europe and the United States are still entangled in chip architecture licensing, China has established advantages through an open-source ecosystem:
Standard Leadership: The “Civil Aviation RISC-V Chip Technical Specification” led by China has become an international standard, recognized by ICAO.
Ecological Construction: The “Aviation Open Source Chip Alliance” has been established, attracting participation from companies like GE Aviation and Airbus, with over 5,000 global developers.
Breaking Technical Blockades: Among the 17 categories of products on the U.S. embargo list for aviation chips to China, 8 categories have already achieved RISC-V alternatives.
Facing technical barriers, China has adopted a “three-step” strategy:
1. Fundamental Breakthrough: The “Xuantie” series RISC-V processors developed by the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have been applied in the BeiDou satellite navigation system.
2. Scenario Validation: Completed 3,000 hours of validation flights on the C919 passenger aircraft, with a failure rate reduced by 70% compared to imported chips.
3. Ecological Countermeasures: Companies like Huawei and Alibaba have open-sourced RISC-V compiler toolchains, with over 200,000 global users.
From chip architecture to airworthiness certification, from laboratory to soaring in the blue sky, China has completed in ten years what took the West thirty years. As the RISC-V chip drives the domestic aircraft soaring through the skies, we see not only a technological breakthrough but also an enhancement of China’s voice in the global industrial chain reconstruction. Do you think open-source architecture will become the mainstream of future aviation chips? Write your answer in the comments section and witness this silent yet magnificent technological revolution together!
Data Support:
– The market size of China’s RISC-V chip is expected to exceed 80 billion yuan by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of over 60%.
– Orders for the C929 equipped with domestic chips have reached 280 aircraft, covering 23 countries and regions.
In the global avionics market, the share of the RISC-V architecture has increased from 1% in 2020 to 18% in 2025.
A certain airline’s practical tests show that domestic chips have reduced flight delay rates by 12% and maintenance costs by 11% to 35%.
(All data in this article comes from authoritative institutions such as COMAC, the RISC-V Foundation, and the International Civil Aviation Organization.)