What next for SiFive?
JPR’s David Harold met with John Ronco, SiFive’s GM and SVP, Product, to discuss the state of the RISC-V market, including chiplets, customization from a design point of view, and the potential of RISC-V to win further sockets from Arm.
At a high level, is being a RISC-V-focused IP company the right business? It feels like there have been challenges. Early companies seemed quite Arm-like, entering deals only to be told their cores were worth a fraction of an Arm core. There’s also been a lot of shifting among RISC-V players to find where the value lies. What has SiFive’s experience been?
John Ronco: Do we believe in RISC-V’s future? Absolutely, yes. The question is, how long it will take? I haven’t met a customer who says they’re entirely content with Arm and don’t need an alternative. Every conversation revolves around when and how they want to adopt RISC-V, not if. The key is understanding how fast the RISC-V market grows and its eventual limits.
In my view, RISC-V will eventually take over everything. It’s just a matter of time. The real question then becomes: Who will drive this adoption? Is there value in being a RISC-V IP provider? My answer is yes but with caveats. The market isn’t big enough for the number of players currently in it. Consolidation is inevitable. That said, IP remains a fundamentally attractive business, and we frequently hear dissatisfaction with Arm’s model, including its move toward chiplets and CSS (Compute Subsystems). Many customers value the flexibility RISC-V IP offers.
To read the full article, click here
Related Semiconductor IP
- Multi-core capable RISC-V processor with vector extensions
- 4x improvement to vector computation with 4x sustained bandwidth of prior generations
- Performance P550 Gen 3
- 8-stage dual issue, in-order, superscalar processor with dual vector processing units (1024-bit VLEN/512-bit DLEN)
- High performance Linux capable vector processor
Related Blogs
- Inside the SiFive Performance™ P570 Gen 3: High Performance Efficiency for Next-Generation Consumer and Commercial Applications
- SiFive Storage Solutions: Powering the Next Generation of SSD
- Scaling for Success: How Weebit is Preparing for its Next Phase of Growth
- SiFive Celebrates 10 Years as Your Trusted Partner for RISC-V IP Innovation
Latest Blogs
- M31 High-Speed and Long-Channel MIPI C/D-PHY Solution on TSMC N3P/N3C
- Understanding security certification and how analog IP can help
- Embedded Security explained: Secure boot for embedded systems
- World's First Standards-Compliant 112G PHY IP for Linear Optics: A Turning Point for AI Interconnects
- One Key for Every Door: How Aliro Extends the UWB Digital Key Beyond the Car