Making the RISC-V move - Foundation to move to Switzerland

williamcll · November 26, 2019

The open source organisation responsible for developing the hardware instruction sets that are common in embedded systems have announced that they are moving out of the states to avoid damages caused by the ongoing trade war.

Quote

The nonprofit RISC-V Foundation is relocating to Switzerland over concerns about the impact of U.S. trade policies.

Foundation CEO Calista Redmond told Reuters that its members are “concerned about possible geopolitical disruption.” The foundation’s board approved the move unanimously after hearing members around the globe say that they would be “a lot more comfortable… if the incorporation were not in the U.S.,” she added.RISC-V is a young organization, founded in 2015 and located in Delaware, to set standards for chip architectures that are allowed to use the RISC-V trademark on its products. RISC-V is a reduced instruction set architecture that is open source technology that anyone can use to design, make or sell RISC-V chips and software for electronics.

On its website, RISC-V posted a statement at the bottom of its history page that said the U.S. has not imposed any export restrictions on the foundation and the foundation has complied with all US laws. “The move does not circumvent any existing restrictions, but rather alleviates uncertainty going forward,” the website said.“Incorporation in Switzerland has the effect of calming concerns of political disruption to the open collaboration model,” the website continued. “The move reduces concern that a government would restrict the actions of an open source organization.”Companies such as Qualcomm, NXP, Huawei and Alibaba Group are members, with a total of more than 325 in all. The U.S. Department of Commerce has named Huawei and other Chinese companies as a threat to U.S. national security.

Source:

https://www.fierceelectronics.com/electronics/risc-v-moves-to-neutral-switzerland-over-trade-disruption

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-semiconductors-insight/u-s-based-chip-tech-group-moving-to-switzerland-over-trade-curb-fears-idUSKBN1XZ16L
Thoughts: Usual politics aside, this move should keep RISC-V development continue on a steady pace. I can see some people complain like how Harley - Davidson moved to Vietnam, but I think the best action to get American companies to come back to the states is to make it more cost effective to operate in their home country.