China Moves Toward One CPU Architecture to Rule Them All

There are rumors that the Chinese government is interested in unifying a processor architecture in China.

ExtremeTech is referring to "various industry sources" that state that the Chinese government has begun the process of picking a national computer chip instruction set architecture (ISA). There is reasonable credibility for such a rumor as China has said for some time that it wants to decrease its dependency on Western CPU architectures and eventually transition entirely to a domestic product.

According to the article, MIPS, Alpha, ARM, Power, and China's own UPU are up for consideration. While it is pure speculation when and if such a standardization decision will be made, it is almost common sense to anticipate that China will keep this one in its own country and be biased toward UPU. However, companies such as MIPS still have hope that they can score with the Chinese government as the Longsoon processor has its origins in a MIPS core. MIPS said that it expects results and answers within a few months.

In a conversation with EETimes, ARM president Tudor Brown said that he was aware of China's ISA moves, and noted that [ARM understands] China’s initial desire to have its own ISA, and [ARM continues] to cooperate and discuss with the key people involved to reach a good solution. However, ARM pricing has reached millions of dollars for a single license, which may out of reach for many Chinese chip makers. According to the report, ARM has more than 34 licensees in China while MIPS has more than 20.