SiFive intros RISC-V processors for automobiles

SiFive introduced three RISC-V processors for automotive manufacturers and their suppliers.

The processors target current and future applications like infotainment, cockpit, connectivity, ADAS, and electrification, as the market transitions to zonal architectures and manufacturers require the energy efficiency, simplicity, security, and software flexibility that RISC-V offers. 

“SiFive is combining the best RISC-V benefits in the only end-to-end portfolio designed to meet automotive needs today and long into the future,” said Patrick Little, CEO and Chairman, SiFive. “We are seeing widespread interest in our new RISC-V automotive solutions and are working closely with several leading semiconductor companies and top-tier suppliers, who are turning to the flexibility of our highest performance cores in areas like safety-critical compute applications. Customers are now able to take advantage of our latest, most powerful cores to bring exciting innovations to consumers.”

“Renesas has been closely collaborating with SiFive to bring the strong benefits of RISC-V to many of our products,” said Takeshi Kataoka, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Automotive Solution Business Unit at Renesas. “RISC-V continues to gain momentum around the world, and we plan to leverage SiFive’s portfolio of automotive RISC-V products in our future automotive SoC solutions to meet the exacting demands of these global customers. Partnering with an innovation leader like SiFive is a logical step that allows us to fuel our growth and meet our customer’s evolving requirements.”

https://www.SiFive.com

SiFive raises $175 million in Series F funding for RISC-V

Monday, March 21, 2022  RISC-V, SiFive, Silicon, Start-Ups  

SiFive, a start-up specializing in RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions, raised $175 million in a Series F financing round, valuing the company at over $2.5 billion. SiFive, which is based in San Mateo, California, develops a range of processor cores, accelerators, and SoC IP to create domain-specific architecture that will enable efficient, high-performance computing solutions. The Series F round was led by Coatue Management, a global...

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Alphawave IP to acquire OpenFive Business Unit from SiFive for $210m

Monday, March 14, 2022  Mergers And Acquisitions, SiFive  

Alphawave IP Group plc agreed to acquire the entire OpenFive business unit from SiFive for US$210 million in cash.SiFive is the founder and leader of RISC-V computing based in San Mateo, California. OpenFive, a SiFive business unit, has a high-speed connectivity system-on-chip (SoC) IP portfolio and a proven team based in India and Silicon Valley that has been delivering custom silicon solutions for over 15 years.  The acquisition significantly...

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SiFive raises $175 million in Series F funding for RISC-V

SiFive, a start-up specializing in RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions, raised $175 million in a Series F financing round, valuing the company at over $2.5 billion. 

SiFive, which is based in San Mateo, California, develops a range of processor cores, accelerators, and SoC IP to create domain-specific architecture that will enable efficient, high-performance computing solutions. 

The Series F round was led by Coatue Management, a global technology investment firm. Coatue joins existing investors AMD (through Xilinx Ventures), Ibex Investors, Intel Capital, Osage University Partners, Prosperity7 ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung Ventures, SK hynix, Spark Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Western Digital Capital.

“The market has spoken and made it abundantly clear that RISC-V computing will be competing for the heart of all future computing platforms. As the founder and market leader of RISC-V computing it’s our role to lead this ecosystem forward and offer customers advanced computing alternative to Arm and others,” said Patrick Little, CEO and Chairman, SiFive. “This valuation is a validation of our strategy, our incredible team, and our singular focus on building the leading portfolio of high-performance RISC-V compute products in the market. Our customers are signaling strong demand for SiFive to deliver the highest level of performance as quickly as possible.”

“We continue to be impressed by SiFive’s growth and challenge to proprietary legacy architecture IP providers,” said Jaimin Rangwalla, Senior Managing Director at Coatue Management. “SiFive’s accomplishments in high-performance RISC-V IP enables future computing platforms to be built on an open, industry-wide base, allowing technology companies to design differentiated products for their target markets. We are proud to partner with and support the team as they create an exciting future for the company.”

“Intel believes in enabling a multi-ISA strategy, including RISC-V as the open compute base for future platforms,” said Bob Brennan, VP & GM, Customer Solutions Engineering, Intel Foundry Services. “Our IFS investment in RISC-V includes partnering with RISC-V leader SiFive to build the Horse Creek developer platform that will be broadly available in late 2022, based on Intel 4 process technology.”

https://www.sifive.com

• To date, SiFive has raised over $350 million.

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Alphawave IP to acquire OpenFive Business Unit from SiFive for $210m

Alphawave IP Group plc agreed to acquire the entire OpenFive business unit from SiFive for US$210 million in cash.

SiFive is the founder and leader of RISC-V computing based in San Mateo, California. 

OpenFive, a SiFive business unit, has a high-speed connectivity system-on-chip (SoC) IP portfolio and a proven team based in India and Silicon Valley that has been delivering custom silicon solutions for over 15 years.  

The acquisition significantly increases Alphawave's customer base globally from 20 currently to over 75, especially in North America, and adds an additional hyperscaler customer based in North America.

This acquisition will nearly double the number of connectivity-focused IPs available to Alphawave customers from 80 to over 155 and will provide customers with a one-stop-shop for their bundled connectivity needs in the most advanced technologies at 5nm, 4nm, 3nm and beyond.  This will include an expanded die-to-die connectivity portfolio that will accelerate chiplet delivery capabilities to customers.  Alphawave has also licensed RISC-V processor IPs from SiFive as part of the transaction. 

Tony Pialis, President and Chief Executive Officer of Alphawave stated: "We have known and worked with the OpenFive team for many years as they have established their credibility in delivering leading-edge SoC IP and custom silicon solutions in the world's most advanced technology, and to the world's most advanced customers.  This acquisition is important for Alphawave, but also for our industry, as we will now be the leading pure-play provider of connectivity solutions in the world in whatever form-factor our customers need it – as silicon IP or in custom silicon solutions like chiplets.  As we look to the future, we expect to develop and acquire additional capabilities to further expand and accelerate our leadership in connectivity.  In our core business, the first quarter of 2022 is very strong and the outlook for 2022 is also strong. We expect this transaction to meaningfully impact revenues in H2 2022, pending regulatory approval of the transaction."

Patrick Little, Chairman and CEO of SiFive stated: "It has been a pleasure working with the Alphawave team on this transaction, and I am sure that we will continue to work together as SiFive focuses on its core RISC-V business.  We were also pleased that Alphawave licensed SiFive's RISC-V processor IP as part of the transaction, which further demonstrates the importance of SiFive RISC-V technology to high-end customers globally in a variety of end markets."

https://www.awaveip.com/en/news-views/alphawave-ip-announces-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-entire-openfive-business-unit-from-sifive-for-us-210m-in-cash/

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SiFive launches two high performance RISC-V cores

SiFive launched two new RISC-V processor cores: the P270, SiFive’s first Linux capable processor with full support for the RISC-V vector extension v1.0 rc, and the SiFive Performance P550 core, SiFive’s highest performance processor -- boasting a SPECInt 2006 score of 8.65/GHz, making it the highest performance RISC-V processor available today, and comparable to existing proprietary solutions in the application processor space.

“SiFive Performance is a significant milestone in our commitment to deliver a complete, scalable portfolio of RISC-V cores to customers in all markets who are at the vanguard of SOC design and are dissatisfied with the status quo,” said Dr. Yunsup Lee, Co-Founder and CTO of SiFive. “These two new products cover new performance points and a wide range of application areas, from efficient vector processors that easily displace yesterday’s SIMD architectures, to the bleeding edge that the P550 represents. SiFive is proud to set the standard for RISC-V processing and is ready to deliver these products to customers today.”

“We are pleased to be a lead development partner with SiFive to showcase to mutual customers the impressive performance of their P550 on our 7nm Horse Creek platform," said Amber Huffman, Intel Fellow and CTO of IP engineering group at Intel. "By combining Intel's leading-edge interface IP such as DDR and PCIe with SiFive's highest performance processor, Horse Creek will provide a valuable and expandable development vehicle for cutting-edge RISC-V applications."

https://www.sifive.com/blog/the-heart-of-sifive-is-performance-intelligence-

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SiFive and Innovium enter collaboration

SiFive and Innovium, announced a collaboration to drive faster innovation in switch silicon solutions.

SiFive specializes in RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions. Innovium is known for its networking switch silicon for cloud and edge data centers.

The companies are collaborating on new designs that incorporate SiFive E2-Series processor cores to extend Innovium’s programmable switch silicon.

Innovium’s TERALYNX offers customers a highly differentiated and comprehensive programmable switch silicon portfolio, from 1 to 25.6Tbps performance and an architecture scaling to 51.2Tbps+, with consistent features and software.

“As Innovium’s highly successful TERALYNX switches ramp in Cloud and Edge data centers, we continue to invest in an industry-leading roadmap for next-generation networks,” said Rajiv Khemani, CEO of Innovium, Inc. “We are pleased to use SiFive’s processor IP in our products for additional flexible and programmable capabilities in the areas of management and configuration.”

“SiFive’s winning processor portfolio is well suited to new designs for datacenter infrastructure thanks to the highly-efficient, silicon-proven, configurable cores we offer,” said Dr. Naveed Sherwani, Chairman, President & CEO of SiFive. “The data center market is searching for efficient and scalable networking solutions that, through collaborating with Innovium, we can help provide.”

SiFive raises $61 million for RISC-V

Tuesday, August 11, 2020  Funding, Korea, RISC-V, SiFive, Silicon, Silicon Valley, Start-Ups  

SiFive, a start-up specializing in RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions,  raised $61 million in a Series E round.

SiFive, which is based in San Mateo, California, develops a range of processor cores, accelerators, and SoC IP to create domain-specific architecture that will enable efficient, high-performance computing solutions. Recently, SiFive announced the SiFive 20G1 update for SiFive Core IP, enabling significant enhancements for performance, power, area, and features, with pre-integrated SiFive Shield, for whole SoC security, and SiFive Insight advanced trace and debug capabilities.

The latest funding round was led by SK hynix, joined by new investor Prosperity7 Ventures, with additional funding from existing investors, Sutter Hill Ventures, Western Digital Capital, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, Intel Capital, Osage University Partners, and Spark Capital.

Innovium raises $170 million for its switching silicon

Tuesday, July 21, 2020  Innovium, Silicon, Switching  

Innovium, a start-up based in San Jose, California, raised $170 million for its switching silicon solutions cloud and edge data centers.

The new funding round included investments from Premji Invest, DFJ Growth, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, and multiple strategic investors, along with existing investors including Greylock, Capricorn, WRVI, Qualcomm Ventures, Redline, S-Cubed Capital and DAG

. Innovium said this latest funding makes it the first network silicon company to achieve billion-dollar valuation "unicorn" status.

Earlier this year, Innovium unveiled its TERALYNX 8 silicon boasting 25.6Tbps switch with 112G SerDes

In addition, Innovium noted the following milestones during 1H 2020:

• Continued volume production ramp of TERALYNX 7
• Ramping TERALYNX 5 shipments for ToR, Edge & 5G customer designs
• Revenue growth of over 5x in 1H 2020 vs 1H 2019
• Achieved over 20% market share in 50G WW SerDes shipments and emerged as the only credible silicon diversity option [1]
• Wins, deployments and trials at majority of top 25 Cloud customers in the world

“We are delighted at the strong adoption at leading OEM, Cloud and ODM customers for our TERALYNX® family, which resulted in over 20% market share for 50G SerDes switch silicon in our first year of shipments. This additional funding, achieved despite ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, validates our vision, execution and momentum in a multi-billion secular high-growth market,” said Rajiv Khemani, Co-founder and CEO of Innovium.

“Data centers are expected to see secular long-term expansion from Cloud, 5G, AI and remote-work applications. Innovative TERALYNX switch silicon products from Innovium have already been adopted by world’s leading hyperscale Cloud providers and leading OEMs including Cisco. We are excited to partner with Innovium for its roadmap innovation and help accelerate go-to-market ramp up,” said TK Kurien, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Premji Invest.

https://www.innovium.com/

Innovium pushes switching silicon to 25.6 Tbps with support for 112G PAM4

Monday, May 11, 2020    

Innovium unveiled its TERALYNX 8 networking switch silicon featuring a massive 25.6 Tbps capacity and support for 112G PAM4 SerDes I/O. This next-generation TERALYNX 8 design features deep programmability, the largest on-chip buffers, and advanced telemetry capabilities.

Innovium's TERALYNX 8 switch, which is aimed at hyperscale data centers and which is expected to sample in the second half of 2020, could be used for highly compact, highest port-density single-chip switches for 100G to 800G configurations, including 1RU, 32 x 800G switch. The silicon will be delivered in a single 7nm die fabricated by TSMC.

Innovium confirmed that its current generation, 12.7 Tbps switching silicon is already being used by numerous commercial customers, including some of the biggest cloud provider networks.

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SiFive raises $61 million for RISC-V

SiFive, a start-up specializing in RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions,  raised $61 million in a Series E round.

SiFive, which is based in San Mateo, California, develops a range of processor cores, accelerators, and SoC IP to create domain-specific architecture that will enable efficient, high-performance computing solutions. Recently, SiFive announced the SiFive 20G1 update for SiFive Core IP, enabling significant enhancements for performance, power, area, and features, with pre-integrated SiFive Shield, for whole SoC security, and SiFive Insight advanced trace and debug capabilities.

The latest funding round was led by SK hynix, joined by new investor Prosperity7 Ventures, with additional funding from existing investors, Sutter Hill Ventures, Western Digital Capital, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, Intel Capital, Osage University Partners, and Spark Capital.

“Global demand for storage and memory in the data center is increasing as AI-powered business intelligence and data processing growth continues”, said Youjong Kang, VP of Growth Strategy, SK hynix. “SiFive is well-positioned to grow with opportunities created from data center, enterprise, storage and networking requirements for workload-focused processor IP.”

http://www.sifive.com

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SiFive Raises $8.5m for RISC-V based custom chips

SiFive based in San Francisco, the fabless provider of customised, open-source-enabled semiconductors:

a.         Co-founded in 2015 by Krste Asanovic, currently the company's chief architect, Yunsup Lee, currently CTO, and Andrew Waterman, currently chief engineer, the inventors of RISC-V technology.

b.         Established with the aim of providing access to custom silicon chip designs leveraging RISC-V technology.

Announced that it has raised $8.5 million in a Series B round led by Spark Capital, with the participation of Osage University Partners and existing investor Sutter Hill Ventures. The latest funding brings the total investment in SiFive to $13.5 million and comes as the company reports increasing demand for RISC-V IP. In conjunction with the new funding, Todd Dagres, general partner at Spark Capital, is to join the SiFive board of directors.

SiFive is a fabless provider of custom semiconductors based on the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture. Founded by the inventors of RISC-V, SiFive stated that in the first six months of availability, more than 1,000 HiFive1 software development boards have been purchased and delivered to developers in over 40 countries.

SiFive launched its Freedom Everywhere platform, designed for micro-controller, embedded, IoT and wearable applications, and Freedom Unleashed platform for machine learning, storage and networking applications in July 2016. In November, it announced general availability of the Freedom Everywhere 310 (FE310) SoC and HiFive1 software development board.

The company noted that RISC-V has established an ecosystem of more than 60 companies that includes Google, HPE, Microsoft, IBM, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Samsung and Microsemi, while member companies and third-party open-source contributors are helping build a suite of software and toolchains that includes GCC and binutils.

https://www.sifive.com/press/

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