Concern arising out of the possible US trade curbs has forced several foreign members of a United States-based foundation urged moving it form the US to Switzerland. The foundation called RISC-V Foundation that oversees promising semiconductor technology developed with Pentagon support, aims to make sure that help for development of its open-source technology from universities, governments and companies outside the US is possible, said Calista Redmond, the chief executive of the organization.

Members of the organization are “concerned about possible geopolitical disruption” even  though no restrictions to date has been faced by the foundation’s global collaboration, she said.

“From around the world, we’ve heard that ‘If the incorporation was not in the US, we would be a lot more comfortable’,” Redmond said. the move was approved unanimously by the foundation’s board of director, she said but refused to disclose the identity of the members who pushed for this move.

Setting of standards for the core chip architecture and controlling who can use the RISC-V trademark on products is the work of the RISC-V Foundation that was founded in 2015. This work is similar for what some other organizations do for Wi-fi and Bluetooth chips. The technology is neither owned nor controlled by the organization.

Membership at the organization is paid and there are more than 325 companies or other entities who are members. The list includes chip makers and suppliers form the US and Europe with names such as Qualcomm and NXP Semiconductors. It also has members from China including Huawei technologies and Alibaba Group.

William Reinsch, who was undersecretary of commerce for export administration in the Clinton administration said that further technology flight could be foreshadowed by the moving of the organization from Delaware to Switzerland because of the US imposing restrictions on doing business and sharing of technology with some Chinese companies.

“There is a message for the government. The message is, if you clamp down on things too tightly this is what is going to happen. In a global supply chain world, companies have choices, and one choice is to go overseas,” Reinsch said.

The controlling power of the US Commerce Department was aimed at safeguarding US national security and to “ensure bad actors cannot acquire technology that harms US citizens or interests, while promoting innovation to fuel continued American technological leadership”, said the department in a statement to the media. In order to gauge market conditions and the effects of its regulations, the Department holds regular meetings with private industry.

Influence over RISC-V chip architecture will be lost by the US, said some Republican lawmakers expressing concerns over the move. They said that technologies can be used for manufacturing of microprocessors for almost every type of electronic device and that is the reason that it is one of the most important building blocks of a modern economy. Initially the technology emerged from the laboratories of the University of California, Berkeley, and later grew exponentially from funding by the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The development of the technology could be influenced by the Chinese members of the foundation such that it helps development of the semiconductor industry of China, warned the US lawmakers.

“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to circumvent our export control system to support national security threats like Huawei – we cannot let it succeed,” Representative Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, told the media.

(Adapted from SCMP.com)

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