SiFive Is Leading The Way For Innovation On RISC-V

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The company appears well positioned to challenge CPU incumbents with high performance RISC-V CPUs and Vector Extensions to the open ISA architecture.

ww.forbes.com, Aug. 08, 2022 – 

The RISC-V CPU Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) is emerging as a serious challenger to current CPUs based on proprietary architectures, creating new opportunities for chip designers and investors alike. While RISC-V first gained traction in the low-end embedded market, where the open ISA model afforded more cost-effective designs, RISC-V is now getting more wind in its sails due to performance and power efficiency, especially with vector enhancements. Behind all the RISC-V buzz, SiFive is the company that makes many of the innovations of the open-source CPU architecture available and so appealing.

In addition to open-source and computing efficiency, RISC-V now offers a well-designed, highly efficient vector processing extension which can enable significant acceleration in applications where large data sets need to be manipulated in parallel. We have published a research paper that dives more deeply into the advantages Vector extensions offer. This note explores the company's role and directions.

RISC-V Benefits and SiFive's Role

Silicon Valley startup SiFive has assumed the role of industry leadership and commercial IP innovation for the RISC-V movement, providing tested Intellectual Property (IP) and support for chip developers who incorporate RISC-V into their products.RISC-V portends to offer an alternative to proprietary processor cores in a user-friendly licensing and development environment. The raw performance of the latest SiFive RISC-V implementation is rapidly closing the gap, but with lower power and smaller die area, and with no lock-in to a closed architecture. SiFive is further enhancing its portfolio with vector processing extensions that clearly differentiate the ISA from any other architecture.

SiFive is essentially the most visible and accomplished commercial steward of RISC-V, providing validated IP and support as well as open and proprietary enhancements to the RISC-V development community. With this open-standard approach and dependable IP, SiFive has garnered over 300 design wins with over 100 firms, including 8 of the top 10 semiconductor companies. With the addition of vector processing, we expect this trend to accelerate.

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