“Since it’s a university project, it’s unclear whether it will ever be used commercially, but considering the Chinese government is looking for alternatives to x86 and Arm, I would not be surprised if XiangShan ends up in a processor for the Chinese market.”
A team of 25 students and teachers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences built an open RISC-V core in a year. The first tape-out runs at 1.3 GHz on TSMC 28nm. The next one moves to SMIC’s 14nm, a Chinese fab. No Arm license and no foreign foundry means no export control can switch it off. Calling it a university project undersells who is paying attention.