In recent years, RISC-V chips have developed rapidly worldwide, especially in the Chinese market, with domestic manufacturers active in various fields.ZTE Corporation, as a less frequently mentioned giant, joined the RISC-V International Foundation as early as 2018, deeply participating in standard formulation.Previously, it disclosed few details about its RISC-V chips, but early last month, it revealed ongoing innovations in related fields to promote ecosystem development, with ZTE Microelectronics set to showcase at the RISC-V China Summit.ZTE Microelectronics has nearly 30 years of development, strong chip R&D capabilities, and a wide product range, making its RISC-V chips highly anticipated.
1. Early Entry and Participation in Standard Formulation
As early as 2018, ZTE Corporation proactively joined the RISC-V International Foundation and was among the first batch of senior members. This status granted it the valuable right to deeply participate in the formulation of RISC-V technical standards, allowing it to collaborate with tech giants like NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel on the development direction of RISC-V technology.
In key areas such as instruction set improvement and architecture optimization, ZTE Corporation leveraged its deep technical accumulation to integrate its R&D achievements and insights, laying a solid foundation for the subsequent application of RISC-V technology in core fields like communications and computing, ensuring that technological development closely aligns with industry needs.
2. Commitment to R&D and Promoting Technological Innovation
(1) Participation in the Xiangshan Open Source Processor Project
ZTE Corporation is actively involved in the R&D of the third-generation Xiangshan RISC-V processor (Kunming Lake architecture), collaborating deeply with the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Alibaba, Tencent, and other industry, academia, and research entities. By integrating various advantageous resources, the Xiangshan processor has achieved significant breakthroughs in performance and energy efficiency, effectively supporting cutting-edge scenarios such as AI computing and edge inference. This not only provides solid technical support for the widespread application of RISC-V in emerging fields but also allows ZTE Corporation to accumulate valuable experience in processor R&D, further strengthening its technical reserves in the RISC-V technology stack.
(2) Exploring Heterogeneous Integration
The “Wujian 600” platform developed by ZTE Corporation is an important achievement in its exploration of heterogeneous integration. This platform cleverly integrates RISC-V CPUs with GPU/NPU acceleration modules using Chiplet technology, significantly enhancing the energy efficiency of AI inference tasks. This innovative architecture breaks the limitations of traditional chip design, better meeting the stringent requirements for chip computing power and energy efficiency in the AI era, significantly enhancing the competitiveness of the RISC-V architecture in high-performance computing, and positioning ZTE Corporation at the forefront of the RISC-V chip design industry.
(3) Research and Development of Storage-Compute Integration Technology
In the context of the intelligent leap in computing power and the integration of computing and networking, ZTE Corporation fully utilizes the simple and open characteristics of RISC-V to actively develop multi-domain solutions for storage-compute integration. These include advanced technologies such as board-level KVS caching solutions, chip-level near-storage solutions, circuit-level in-memory processing, and material-level memory computing. These technologies effectively reduce data transmission energy consumption and significantly improve data processing efficiency, paving new technological paths for future high-performance computing and helping ZTE Corporation occupy an important technological high ground in the frontier field of RISC-V and computing integration.
3. Product Implementation and Expanding Application Scenarios
(1) Communication and Network Equipment
ZTE Corporation has introduced the RISC-V architecture into its core communication devices, with its DPU network chip enhancing network and storage acceleration capabilities to meet the high data processing demands of 5G/6G. In 5G-A and 6G infrastructures, the RISC-V core reduces device power consumption and enhances stability. Additionally, high-performance computing chips and storage-compute integration technologies developed based on RISC-V are applied in data centers and intelligent computing scenarios, providing low-power computing support for cloud services and AI training, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of server chips in the market.
(2) End Devices and Edge Computing
ZTE has launched a super SIM chip based on RISC-V (such as CC2560A), which, when integrated into super SIM cards, enhances communication speed and computing power. The Telebox edge computing box integrates AI acceleration modules, adapting to edge scenarios such as smart grids and industrial control with its compact and low-power characteristics, expanding the application of RISC-V in edge computing.
4. Ecosystem Development and Promoting Industry Prosperity
(1) Open Source Ecosystem Cooperation
ZTE Corporation actively participates in RISC-V open source projects, with the “Yeying 1520” SoC prototype developed in collaboration with PingTouGe successfully compatible with the Longxin Linux operating system, effectively promoting the application of self-controllable chip architectures. Through open-source cooperation, integrating industry resources has effectively reduced R&D costs, accelerated RISC-V technological innovation and application promotion, and contributed significantly to building a healthy and prosperous open-source ecosystem.
(2) Industry Ecosystem Expansion
By collaborating with international companies such as NVIDIA and Google, ZTE Corporation vigorously promotes the application of RISC-V in high-performance computing and AI fields. At the same time, the RISC-V chip developed in collaboration with Baidu for data centers aims to achieve “seamless switching” with x86/ARM, further broadening the application scope of RISC-V chips, enhancing RISC-V’s influence and recognition in the industry, and attracting more companies to participate in the construction of the RISC-V ecosystem.
5. A Promising Future, Embracing Challenges and Opportunities
Currently, although ZTE Corporation has achieved many remarkable results in the RISC-V chip field, the large-scale commercial use of high-performance server chips still faces challenges such as ecosystem adaptation (e.g., commercial software migration) and cost control.
As the demand for RISC-V continues to grow in AI, edge computing, and other fields, ZTE Corporation is expected to further expand its market share through continuous technological iteration and ecosystem integration, leveraging its deep technical accumulation, rich product layout, and proactive ecosystem development.
In the context of increasingly fierce competition in the global semiconductor industry, ZTE Corporation’s layout in the RISC-V chip field will inject strong momentum into its long-term development in core areas such as communications and computing, helping it seize opportunities in emerging markets and achieve greater breakthroughs and development.
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