SiFive Joins Open COVID Pledge to Fight Global Pandemic

The idea-to-silicon company pledges free SiFive E21 Standard Core for use in healthcare products

SAN MATEO, Calif. Apr 30, 2020 - SiFive, Inc., the leading provider of commercial RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions, today announced announced it has taken the Open COVID Pledge, offering the SiFive E21 Standard Embedded Processor Core free of charge for use in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and minimizing the impact of the disease. Potential applications include use in control systems for healthcare products such as ventilators and other life-saving equipment. SiFive joins other leading companies in the fight against COVID-19 by offering intellectual property free of charge to accelerate the rapid development and deployment of diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, medical equipment, and software solutions.

“At SiFive, we believe making custom silicon more accessible is key to innovation, and that holds now more than ever,” said Dr. Naveed Sherwani, SiFive President and CEO. “By providing the SiFive E21 Standard Core IP to companies addressing COVID-19, our goal is to remove business and technological barriers. We’re encouraging our customers and partners to join us in making this pledge. Together, through technology, we can minimize the virus’s spread and ultimately save lives.”

SiFive’s mission is to help democratize access to custom silicon, improving quality, and reducing time to market. Since its founding in 2015, SiFive has been fostering accelerated innovation through open-source contributions . The company has pledged the SiFive E21 Standard Core, a high-performance, full-featured embedded processor core designed to address efficient microcontroller applications, which will help in manufacturing healthcare products such as ventilators.

The Open COVID Pledge calls on organizations around the world to make their patents and copyrights freely available in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pledge was developed by the Open COVID Coalition, an international group of scientists and lawyers seeking to accelerate the rapid development and deployment of diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, medical equipment and software solutions in this urgent public health crisis. Learn more at https://opencovidpledge.org/. For more information on using the SiFive E21 Standard Core IP in a design under the terms of the COVID-19 pledge, please visit SiFive.com.

About SiFive
SiFive is on a mission to free semiconductor roadmaps and declare silicon independence from the constraints of legacy ISAs and fragmented solutions. As the leading provider of market-ready processor core IP and silicon solutions based on the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture, SiFive helps SoC designers reduce time-to-market and realize cost savings with customized, open-architecture processor cores, and democratizes access to optimized silicon by enabling system designers in all markets to build customized RISC-V based semiconductors. Founded by the inventors of RISC-V, SiFive has 16 design centers worldwide and backing from Sutter Hill Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Spark Capital, Osage University Partners, Chengwei, Huami, SK Hynix, Intel Capital, and Western Digital. For more information, please visit www.sifive.com.