The Hong Kong-made chip "Lion Rock" was exposed at the end of March, and this news has attracted widespread attention. The Lionrock chip uses the RISC-V architecture and is expected to be launched next year. The research and development of this chip was completed by the cooperation of Li Jiajie's family office "Fusheng Capital" and two companies. Specifically, StarFive and Super Fusion Digital Technology Co., Ltd. ("Super Fusion") signed a strategic cooperation agreement to set up a joint innovation center in Hong Kong to jointly develop and apply the chip.
In addition, the development of the Lion Rock chip is also supported by Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited, which has entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with StarFive and Super Fusion to accelerate the development of new quality productivity. This shows that the "Lion Rock" chip is not only a product, but also an important milestone in Hong Kong's independent R&D and production in the field of semiconductors, symbolizing the new momentum of Hong Kong's industrial transformation and the development of new quality productivity.
The R&D and exposure of the "Lionrock" chip marks a major step forward in Hong Kong's high-tech industries, especially in the field of semiconductors. Through cooperation with domestic and foreign enterprises, Hong Kong is striving to enhance its position in the global semiconductor industry and unleash new momentum for the development of new quality productivity.
"Lion Rock" was developed by two companies in cooperation. The first is StarFive, an innovation and technology company incubated by Li Jiajie's family office "Empowerment Capital", and the first is Super Fusion, a computing infrastructure and service provider independent from Huawei. Ganghua Chip, which is also invested by Li Jiajie's family office, produced 1.6 million pieces last year and has been widely used in the mainland.
Hong Kong's semiconductor industry is still in its infancy, and there is no industrial chain. The Yuen Long InnoPark Microelectronics Centre is expected to operate this year and is yet to be completed.
Although the stock of chip companies is not much, there is a lot of increment - mainly related to the mainland.
According to the Hong Kong Companies Registry, in the past two years, about 5 to 600 I&T companies related to chips, semiconductors or microelectronics have been established each year, and nearly one-third of them have mainland backgrounds.
In 2015, riding on the tide of "entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship" in the mainland, the Hong Kong Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau was established. When introducing Hong Kong's start-up ecosystem, government agencies emphasised the need to nurture "local start-ups" or unicorns with "Hong Kong DNA", followed by using Hong Kong as a "connector in the Greater Bay Area" to attract foreign entrepreneurs to Hong Kong and tap the springboard to explore business opportunities in Chinese mainland.
In fact, whether it is making chips or doing scientific and technological innovation, most of them are mainlanders.
Some research institutes have found that if the source of funds or founders of new companies is roughly judged from their names, up to 40% of new I&T companies are named in Putonghua Pinyin, Mainland provinces and cities, or use Mainland terms (e.g. "information technology" or "technology") instead of the "I&T" commonly used in Hong Kong.
Even though some I&T companies have names in foreign countries (most commonly Japan and Germany), others use Mandarin Pinyin. They may be wholly mainland-owned, Sino-foreign joint ventures rather than purely foreign-owned.
I&T investment accounts for less than 1% of Hong Kong's GDP. On an annual basis, about one-tenth (more than 10,000) of all newly registered companies are I&T enterprises. Less money and more companies mean that most of the new companies are "small and micro enterprises", or government-sponsored "start-ups", or companies that focus on research rather than production.
In order to build an "international innovation and technology hub", the Hong Kong government has indeed spared no effort.
There are already 17 funding schemes under the Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) alone, and locally established companies, regardless of where the funding comes from, can benefit from most of them. The ITF has approved funding of over HK$30 billion, and most of the projects are related to biotechnology, environmental protection, information technology and electronics.
Compared with other mainstream architectures (such as ARM and x86), the RISC-V architecture adopted by the Hong Kong-made chip "Lionrock" has the following advantages and characteristics:
1. Late-mover advantage: Since the RISC-V architecture has only been launched in recent years, it does not bear the burden of backward compatibility, so it is more streamlined and efficient in design.
2. Low power consumption: Similar to ARM, RISC-V is a reduced instruction set architecture and is suitable for low-energy scenarios such as embedded systems, IoT devices, and mobile devices. In contrast, the x86 architecture is more suitable for high-performance computing, cloud computing, big data and other fields due to high power consumption.
3. Open source and openness: The open source feature of RISC-V enables anyone to participate in its development and improvement, and promotes the sharing and innovation of chip technology. This openness allows for the freedom to be used for any purpose, allowing anyone to design, manufacture, and sell RISC-V-based chips or software.
4. Modular: RISC-V supports modular design, which enables it to be customized according to the needs of different application scenarios to meet specific performance requirements.
5. Flexibility and a wide range of application prospects: RISC-V allows users to customize the instruction set according to actual needs, and this flexibility makes it suitable for a variety of application scenarios. At the same time, as an emerging instruction set architecture, RISC-V has a wide range of application prospects.
6. Low cost: Due to the open source nature of RISC-V, manufacturers can save high licensing fees, thereby reducing the production cost of chips.
7. High-performance computing capabilities: In the field of high-performance computing, RISC-V has demonstrated high computing performance by designing a variety of instruction set extensions for task acceleration, such as vector computing, encryption and decryption, and other tasks19.
The long-term impact on Hong Kong's semiconductor industry includes: Enhancing technological proficiency and international competitiveness: By participating in the research and development of the "Lionrock" chip, Towngas and its partners will be able to master more core technologies and enhance Hong Kong's technological position and competitiveness in the global semiconductor industry. Promoting industrial upgrading and transformation: The R&D and application of the chip will promote Hong Kong's transformation from a traditional manufacturing industry to a high-tech, high-value-added digital economy industry, injecting new momentum into the sustainable development of Hong Kong's economy. Strengthen regional cooperation and ecological construction: Through cooperation with other enterprises and institutions in the Greater Bay Area, the participation of enterprises such as Hong Kong and China Gas will help build a closer regional industrial chain and promote the development of the semiconductor industry in the entire Greater Bay Area and even the whole country.