On July 2nd, after a few years of development of domestic CPUs, it is likely to usher in the biggest adjustment affecting the direction of future development. According to the well-known electronic technology website EE Times, in March this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology convened related companies and academic institutions and held a conference called "China's National Instruction Set Architecture Plan." The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the creation of a unified instruction set architecture for domestic CPUs, the Unified CPU Architecture Standard (ISA).

IT Business News learned that the plan is advancing and there are no concrete results.

According to Sina Technology, the instruction set architecture is the core part of the CPU and is the key to the CPU's task processing. Many softwares are developed on this basis.

Currently in the field of PC chips, the Intel X86 architecture almost monopolizes the entire market. In the hottest mobile chip market, the ARM architecture of UK ARM manufacturers also accounts for more than 80% of the market share. From Apple, Samsung to HTC, and even the “cottage” giant MediaTek is adopting this architecture. Since the Intel X86 architecture is not open to the outside world, domestic CPUs have adopted other architectures. For example, Godson adopts the American MIPS architecture, and the domestic high-performance computer Shenwei Blu-ray CPU adopts the Alpha architecture developed by DEC, while in the field of mobile chips, domestic manufacturers have almost chosen the ARM architecture.

In the past decade or so, the country has focused on nuclear high-grade projects and has been providing financial support on domestic CPUs. The purpose is to have China's own chips and to get rid of the situation of paying royalties to foreign companies. However, the current status quo still makes domestic CPUs paralyzed. In the area of ​​PC and mobile Internet, domestic companies still have no right to speak.

This status quo may trigger a plan to build a unified architecture for domestic CPUs. Zhang Yunquan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who understands the matter, revealed to Sina Technology that the relevant plan is being advanced. Although it is only an intention, it is still very likely to be achieved.

Zhang Yunquan said that the establishment of a unified CPU instruction set architecture, application software, etc. can be focused on R & D, which will reduce research and development costs, help domestic CPU rapid formation of the ecosystem. However, Zhang Yunquan pointed out that the adoption of a unified instruction set architecture for domestic CPUs may limit competition among various companies and have a negative impact on innovation. In the past, due to different architectures of different domestic CPUs, their respective ecosystems were actually isolated from each other, and creating a unified instruction set architecture could solve this isolated status quo. An insider of a chip company who did not wish to be named told Sina Technology that the country’s investment in domestic CPUs was relatively decentralized, and each development was not strong enough. To build a unified CPU architecture, it was possible to focus on investment resources and help to make domestic CPUs. Bigger and stronger.

It is understood that at least five instruction set architectures are being considered as the basis of the national unified instruction set architecture, including the PowerPC architecture developed by IBM, the SPARC architecture developed by Sun, the ARM architecture, the Alpha architecture developed by DEC, and the MIPS architecture. But it does not rule out building a new instruction set architecture from scratch. Among the above five architectures, the best in industrialization is the ARM architecture, followed by the MIPS architecture, and other architectures are mainly adopted by a few research institutes and other institutions. The industry generally believes that due to ARM's high licensing costs, it is unlikely to be adopted. For re-creating a new architecture, Zhang Yunquan believes that this is unlikely. He said, "Starting from scratch means that there is no advantage in domestic CPUs."

Gu Wenjun, the chief semiconductor analyst of iSuppli, who is familiar with the matter, also said, “I think it is unlikely to start from scratch.” According to him, the MIPS architecture is very likely to win because of its low licensing costs and domestic industrialization. I also did a good job. The MIPS architecture is an instruction set architecture developed by the United States MIPS Corporation. The domestic chip companies such as Godson and Jun Zheng have developed a variety of chips based on this architecture and have carried out industrialization operations. The upstream and downstream ecosystems are gradually being formed.

It is reported that the United States MIPS company is currently operating poorly, there is news that it is seeking to sell. According to Gu Wenjun, there are several chip companies in China that have considered taking shares or acquiring MIPS companies in the United States, but they have not been able to do so.

An industry insider who declined to be named stated that there is no technical difficulty in launching a set of instruction sets, but the entire ecosystem is difficult to build. This view is similar to that held by ARM president Tudor Brown.

In an interview with EE Times, Brown said, "Although defining an instruction set architecture is a relatively short-term activity, it takes a long time to establish and deploy a dynamic ecosystem."

With regard to the operation of the unified CPU architecture, industry insiders speculated that a unified instruction set architecture may want to integrate the advantages of various CPU-based architectures, similar to the establishment of a patent pool, but how to operate smoothly is a more realistic problem.

Sina Science and Technology once linked the plan for the unified CPU architecture to Sun Jiaxing, director of the Integrated Circuit Division of the Software and Integrated Circuit Promotion Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. He did not want to comment too much on the topic on the phone, saying only that "at present, there is no clear statement."