FOR years, designing advanced computer chips required millions in licensing fees. Now, RISC-V, an open-source instruction set architecture, is gaining momentum as a collaborative alternative to proprietary technology. Experts at the 2026 Zhongguancun Annual Forum in Beijing announced that China has built a complete RISC-V ecosystem spanning innovation and industrial application, positioning itself as a major player in the push for autonomous computing infrastructure.

An instruction set acts like a dictionary for a chip. While traditional architectures like x86 — controlled by Intel and AMD — require costly fees and restrict modifications, RISC-V is free for anyone to use, change, and build upon.

At a forum sideline event, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) unveiled two key achievements: Xiangshan, an open-source high-performance processor core, and openRuyi, a native operating system designed to fully align with that hardware. Together, they form the backbone of two RISC-V open-source communities led by China.

Bao Yungang, deputy director of CAS’ Institute of Computing Technology, said Xiangshan is currently the world’s most powerful open-source RISC-V processor, posting 16.5 points per GHz in the SPEC CPU2006 benchmark. He noted the core is already used in AI, cloud computing, and industrial controls.

Wu Yanjun, deputy director of CAS’ Institute of Software, explained that openRuyi was built from the start to match the processor’s features, allowing hardware performance to be fully leveraged. CAS also released the RuyiSDK, a one-stop toolbox to help engineers build software quickly.

The move toward open-source chips is also a bid for supply chain security. Liu Yanan, a chip director at China Mobile (Suzhou) Software Technology Company, said a mature RISC-V ecosystem will help meet diverse computing demands while ensuring autonomy and affordability.

CAS has assembled one of the world’s largest RISC-V development teams, with over 1,000 researchers in hardware and software. Its talent programs have drawn more than 27,000 participants from over 1,100 universities worldwide, signaling a global shift toward shared, collaborative chip innovation.(SD-Agencies)