A new Chinese study and the European DARE project are relaunching RISC-V as a strategic alternative to proprietary technologies. But American pressure risks blocking Europe’s race towards digital autonomy – by Andrea Monti – Originally published in Italian in La Repubblica – Italian Tech
A study published on 2 April 2025 in Nature by a group of researchers led by two scientists from Fudan University in Shanghai has demonstrated the possibility, using RISC-V architecture, of building one-nanometre microprocessors with materials other than silicon and with technologies other than Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography normally used in these manufacturing processes.
Currently, the performance of this processor is not yet on par with that developed with technologies in which the West holds a technological lead and which are subject to bans on exports to China. However, the result described in the study is likely to weaken strategies based on the use of technology tariffs as undeclared sanctions formally presented as a tool for protecting the internal market.
Apart from the scientific interest in such a result — building chips of this thickness is one of the most coveted goals of the chip race, in which Taiwanese giant TMSC is also participating — the news is important above all for its geopolitical and industrial implications. This is not only in terms of relations between the US and China, but also and above all in terms of how the EU and its member states will decide to deal with the trade war declared by the US.
What is RISC-V and why is it important?
RISC-V is a project launched over ten years ago at the University of Berkeley, already a protagonist in the battle to ‘liberate’ UNIX from AT&T’s proprietary code, which culminated in the creation of Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), totally free of intellectual property, for the development of processor architectures equally free from legal restrictions. Over time, the project has grown to the point where it is now managed by an autonomous entity, the RISC-V Initiative, which has been joined by some 70 countries, including India and China.
RISC-V is important because it does for processors what free software — Linux, but above all BSD — has done for programs: it creates a pre-competitive environment for developing tools that everyone can then use and improve, sharing the results without legal restrictions — and therefore without dominant positions that can alter the ecosystem.
That a model free from intellectual property constraints can work is clear to everyone: without the free software movement, the internet as we know it today and a myriad of technologies and applications would never have been born. Therefore, there are no prejudicial limits to the use of the same free approach to hardware design, as demonstrated by the success of Arduino.
By combining free operating systems and applications with RISC-V processors, it is therefore possible to have an entire processing system free from monopolistic and geopolitical constraints.
It is no coincidence that India has invested heavily in this project to create an entire digital transformation supply chain, from foundries for processors to software development, and that China is using it to increase its technological independence from the West, which has already been significantly reduced with the development of ‘traditional’ chips capable of competing with those used by Apple in smart devices.
What is the role of RISC-V in the US-EU tariff war?
As part of its retaliatory measures against US trade aggression, the EU continues to threaten tariffs on Big Tech. If adopted without a comprehensive medium- to long-term strategy for technological decoupling, these counter-sanctions would be a spectacular own goal. Their application would, in fact, entail a very substantial increase in the cost of using digital products and services in public administrations and businesses, as well as possibly triggering further significant retaliation, such as the revocation of US software licences and, therefore, their automatic remote deactivation.
On the one hand, therefore, the recent creation of a European coalition funded by the EU, Digital Autonomy with Risc-V in Europe (DARE), which has started participating in the RISC-V project and of which Italy is also a part, is excellent news. On the other hand, the very recent launch date of DARE, in early 2025, is proof of the EU’s strategic inability to come up with effective long-term strategies. European participation in RISC-V had been on the table for at least three years, and who knows how many more would have passed if the international situation had not sounded the alarm and prompted the hasty establishment, starting on 1 March 2025, of a special funding line.
A participation dead in the water?
Although Europe’s (belated) participation in the RISC-V initiative is to be welcomed, the enthusiasm could last only a morning because the US has already expressed reservations about China’s participation in the project, and the EU will have to decide whether to accept Washington’s request to impose sanctions on China.
The intersection of these two paths clearly leads to the risk of having to take a step back and give up the advantages of access to free and advanced technologies which, as the Chinese study mentioned above shows, can rival proprietary and geopolitically controlled technologies.
The long-term consequences of abandoning RISC-V
For the US, RISC-V represents not only a technological problem but above all a political paradox. If US companies, by choice or by executive order, were to boycott the free processor initiative, they would condemn themselves to self-exclusion from a project that could condemn them to reduced competitiveness. If, on the other hand, they were to participate actively, they would find themselves having to share the results with countries such as China, against which they have active technological restriction policies. Furthermore, the closer the EU gets to technological independence, the lower the costs of using US products and services, but above all the technopolitical controls.
It would therefore come as no surprise if US interests were to go so far as to demand that the EU withdraw from any international technology project that benefits China — but also European countries themselves.
Therefore, if, in the context of the tariff negotiations, the EU were to accept the request to boycott participation in RISC-V, in addition to the direct damage to member countries, it would set a dangerous precedent for all technologies based on ‘free’ licences that provide for the sharing of results and the right to reuse them independently.
Weakening the power of free intellectual property management in the digital ecosystem would mean balkanising it, thus creating, once again, a bi- or multipolar system that inevitably leads to the creation of opposing blocs.
This is not a hypothesis but a fact, as demonstrated by the US government’s restriction on the use of Android imposed on Huawei, which gave rise to HarmonyOS Next, China’s response to the ban, and a free version of it, in direct competition with the core of Android.
Hic Rhouds, hic salta
Although not immediately apparent to the public, the game of technological independence played out in the field of participation in international projects cannot be lost, and it is therefore highly inadvisable to give in to US pressure on this point. But precisely because RISC-V and other free initiatives represent a threat to US technological supremacy, it is difficult to imagine that they will not be the subject of attention from the Trump administration.
Here’s the stumbling block, European Union. Now jump.
If you can.