[peppermint_gum]

I don't understand why anyone would see dropping RISC-V support as a move against China. Chinese companies have their fingers in a lot of pies.

They're mainly invested in the ARM ecosystem, companies such as Allwinner, HiSilicon, Rockchip and UNISOC are very successful in this market. They also make x86 CPUs (Zhaoxin) and have developed their own domestic MIPS-derived architecture (LoongArch).

[justinclift]

> I don't understand why anyone would see dropping RISC-V support as a move against China. Chinese companies have their fingers in a lot of pies.

China are doing the shotgun approach, of shooting wide and hoping something hits the target. aka putting money into everything in the hope something will work to make them independent of western (chip making related) sanctions

So, while China is doing a lot with ARM... they're also doing a lot with RISC-V. And RISC-V (at least until recent US government concerns) has had a very high uptake internationally + corresponding growth trajectory.

ARM is still "western" tech, whereas RISC-V is more international now.

For reference:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-china-tech-war-risc-v-...

Note the specific mention of Google, Android and RISC-V in that?

So there is clearly a change of "something" internally at Google to be backtracking just a few months later, though it could indeed be just a co-incidence.

It'll be interesting if we see other (western) companies change their RISC-V plans too. ;)