[bem94]

The algorithm specific instructions are all optional. You can have AES without SM4 or vice versa. RISC-V is great like that, it's designed to be modular.

> instead of requiring the rest of the world to waste transistors for something that's useless.

I'm sure Chinese manufacturers might feel the same about NIST standards.

[tialaramex]

> I'm sure Chinese manufacturers might feel the same about NIST standards.

Don't count on it. For example have you ever wondered why there isn't a Russian Certificate Authority trusted in the Web PKI? There's no market for one. If you're a Russian, you can see that a Russian CA is obviously subject to control by Putin, which even if you like Putin today doesn't seem like a perpetually great idea, so you would choose some European CA instead. And if you're not a Russian you clearly don't want to trust this CA.

Now, there are some Chinese CAs, but it's again interesting that they're not popular in China. China has a huge population, plenty of potential customers, but somehow even though there is more than one CA in China, very few certificates between them. Similar to the number issued to the Government of Spain (not all companies in Spain, just their government). Same reasoning. Even if I think Xi Jinping is great and I'm a proud Chinese national, a certificate from the US or Switzerland seems like a better choice.

The Americans fall far below the lofty moral standards they set for others [in the other room is my redacted copy of the Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program, grim reading about American torture even though much of what the senate were shown is redacted], but only at your considerable peril should you would mistake that for meaning their cryptography is no better than whatever home grown offering has been chosen in your country despite their billions spent and their expertise in this domain.

[nullc]

> For example have you ever wondered why there isn't a Russian Certificate Authority trusted in the Web PKI? There's no market for one.

A more direct comparison would be Russian ciphers and there absolutely are modern Russian ciphers, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznyechik