The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is gearing up to make a major splash in the tech world with plans to unveil its XiangShan open-source processor by 2025. This ambitious project marks a key step in China’s quest for homegrown chip solutions. Bao Yungang, deputy director at the Institute of Computing Technology, recently shared an update on Weibo, emphasizing their steady progress in the high-performance computing domain.
Initiated in 2019, the XiangShan project has come a long way, with significant strides made in developing its third-generation architecture, dubbed Kunminghu. This new architecture is reportedly approaching the performance level of Arm’s Neoverse N2 CPU core, with only an 8 percent difference. Such advancements suggest that it could soon power cloud computing systems, high-performance computing setups, and even machine learning tasks.
Throughout 2024, the focus has been on enhancing Kunminghu’s efficiency, optimizing its area, and power consumption. The processor is designed with multiple parallel processing units for integer, floating-point, and vector operations. Equipped with out-of-order execution capabilities, it has shown potential in simulations to operate at speeds up to 3GHz.
The previous version, known as the Nanhu chip, was produced using a 14nm process and reached speeds of 2GHz. Released in late 2023, Nanhu represented the project’s second-generation silicon development.
Harnessing the RISC-V instruction set under the Mulan PSL-2.0 license, XiangShan offers a fresh approach by allowing royalty-free use and modification of its design. This could challenge traditional licensing models, much like Linux did in the software industry.
However, the project has caught the attention of the United States, as concerns grow over China’s increasing use of RISC-V technology. Recently, the U.S. Commerce Department has been examining potential security implications. As a result, Google also pulled RISC-V support from the Android kernel, which might impact the future of RISC-V-powered phones.
The XiangShan initiative heralds an exciting shift in chip development, spotlighting China’s commitment to innovation and technological independence on the global stage.
