For years, designing a high-end computer chip meant spending millions on licensing fees, creating an insurmountable barrier for startups. Now, an open-source "instruction set architecture" called RISC-V is gaining momentum as a collaborative and free alternative to proprietary technology.

Experts at the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum, a top-level national science and technology showcase held annually in Beijing, said last week that China has built a complete RISC-V ecosystem. This network spans technological innovation and industrial application, positioning the country as a major player in the global push for autonomous computing infrastructure.

To understand how a chip works, it helps to think of an instruction set as a dictionary. Just as people consult a dictionary to recognize and use words, a chip depends on these instructions to interpret and execute software commands.

While traditional "dictionaries" like the x86 architecture — controlled by Intel and AMD — require costly fees and prohibit modifications, RISC-V is open. This means anyone can freely use, change, and build upon it.

At a sideline event during the forum, the Chinese Academy of Sciences introduced two major achievements. The first is Xiangshan, an open-source processor system that serves as the hardware core. The second is open-Ruyi, a native operating system designed specifically to run on that hardware.

As technology advances, simply making chips faster is no longer sufficient. The challenge now lies in compute scaling — the ability to manage massive amounts of simultaneous tasks and distribute power efficiently across a network. This makes high-performance processors the "chief commanders" of a computer's overall speed.

Bao Yungang, deputy director of the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the Xiangshan core is currently the most powerful open-source RISC-V processor in the world. The core posts a measured performance of 16.5 points per gigahertz in SPEC CPU2006, the standard industry benchmark for processor performance. In simpler terms, it measures how efficiently a processor handles complex mathematical tasks.

Bao said this partnership creates a two-way flow where technology development and industry needs to reinforce each other.

He noted that Xiangshan is already being used in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and industrial controls.

Traditionally, software is adapted to fit existing hardware, which can lead to inefficiencies. Wu Yanjun, a deputy director at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Software, said openRuyi was distinct because it was built from the start to fully align with the processor's technical features.

Wu said the synergy between hardware and software is crucial, and with this new approach, Xiangshan's hardware performance can be fully leveraged.

To encourage more companies to join, the academy also released the RuyiSDK. A Software Development Kit, or SDK, is a one-stop toolbox that provides the necessary programs and guides for engineers to build software quickly without having to start from scratch.

The move toward open-source chips is also a bid for supply chain security — ensuring that a country or company is not cut off from vital technology by trade disputes or high costs.

Liu Yanan, a chip technology director at China Mobile (Suzhou) Software Technology Co, said the goal is to build a computing system that is autonomous and affordable. He noted that a mature RISC-V ecosystem will help meet the diverse computing demands of the digital economy.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has now assembled one of the world's largest RISC-V development teams.

This includes more than 600 researchers focused on hardware and another 400 on software. Their talent programs have attracted more than 27,000 participants from over 1,100 universities worldwide, signaling a shift toward a more global, shared approach to the future of the silicon chip.