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SiFive

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SiFive, Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustrySemiconductors[1]
FoundedSeptember 2015; 9 years ago (September 2015)[1]
Founders
HeadquartersSanta Clara, California, U.S.[2]
Key people
Patrick Little (CEO)[3]
RevenueUS$38.1 million (2023)[4]
US$−113 million (2023)[4]
Number of employees
c. 500 (2023)[5]
Websitesifive.com

SiFive, Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor company and provider of commercial RISC-V processors and silicon chips based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA).[6] Its products include cores, SoCs, IPs, and development boards.[7]

SiFive is one of the first companies to produce a chip that implements the RISC-V ISA.[8]

History

[edit]

In 2015, researchers Krste Asanović, Yunsup Lee, and Andrew Waterman from the University of California Berkeley founded SiFive.[6][7] On November 29, 2016, SiFive released the Freedom Everywhere 310 SoC and the HiFive development board.[7] This made it the first company to produce a chip that implements the RISC-V ISA since universities had already produced RISC-V processors.[7][9]

Naveed Sherwani was appointed as the CEO in August 2017.[10] In October the same year, SiFive did a limited release of its U54-MC, which was reported to be the first RISC-V based 64-bit quad-core CPU that supported comprehensive operating systems like Linux.[11][12]

In June 2018, SiFive acquired Open-Silicon for an undisclosed amount and retained their application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design capabilities.

In February 2018, SiFive released the HiFive Unleashed, a development board containing a 64-bit SoC with four U54 cores.[13][14]

In September 2020, Patrick Little was appointed as the CEO.[3]

In October 2020, SiFive released the HiFive Unmatched, a Mini-ITX development board with four U74-MC cores, one S7 core, 8GB DDR4 RAM, four USB 3.2 Gen1 ports, one PCI Express x16 slot, one PCIe Gen3 x4, one microSD card slot, and a Gigabit Ethernet.[15] In April 2021, the company also taped out its first system-on-chip on TSMC's N5 process technology, making it the first RISC-V-based device to be made using a 5 nm node.[16]

In June 2021,[17] Canonical announced its Ubuntu operating system supports the HiFive Unmatched and HiFive Unleashed, and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center collaborated with Codeplay Software and SiFive to implement support for the RISC-V V-extension v0.10 in the LLVM compilation infrastructure, providing vector computation capabilities through C/C++ intrinsics.[18] Reports of a potential buyout of SiFive by Intel and other companies emerged, however Intel's plans were eventually cancelled due to disagreements with SiFive.[19][20]

In 2023, it was reported that SiFive had laid off 20% of its staff.[21]

SiFive became the main sponsor of the Cambridge United F.C. for the 2022/23 and the 2023/24 seasons. The partnership is intended to amplify both of their visions to support each other and the community, as well as establish SiFive within the city.[22][23]

Growth

[edit]

In September 2015, SiFive raised $5 million in Series A funding. In May 2017 SiFive raised $8.5 million in Series B.[24]

In April 2018, SiFive received $50.6 million Series C funding,[25] including a major amount from Intel Capital.

In June 2019, SiFive received $65.4 million in a Series D funding round[26] led by existing investors Sutter Hill Ventures, Chengwei Capital, Spark Capital, Osage University Partners and Huami, alongside new investor Qualcomm Ventures. This brought the total investment in SiFive to $125 million.

On October 23, 2019, at the Linley Fall Processor Conference, SiFive announced the release of SiFive Shield, a platform security architecture. In December 2019, the company announced the SiFive Apex cores for mission-critical markets and SiFive Intelligence cores for vector processing workloads. Later that month, Samsung also announced it will be using SiFive RISC-V cores for SoCs, automotive, and 5G applications.[27]

In January 2020, SiFive hired Chris Lattner, an American software engineer best known as the main author of LLVM and related projects such as the Clang compiler and the Swift programming language. He joined SiFive as Senior Vice President of Platform Engineering after two years at Google.[28]

In August 2020, SiFive received $60 million in a Series E funding round[29] led by investors SK Hynix and Saudi Aramco. This brought the total investment in SiFive to $186 million. That same month, SiFive announced the creation of the OpenFive business unit to focus on the creation of processor-agnostic custom SoC design.[30]

Chip company Tenstorrent, headed by former top AMD engineers, including CTO Jim Keller, licensed SiFive's Intelligence X280 processor cores in October 2020 into its homegrown AI training and inference chips.[31] Renesas Electronics also announced partnering with SiFive to design chips for vehicles.[32]

In June 2021, SiFive launched a new processor family with two core designs: P270, a Linux-capable CPU; and P550, the highest-performing RISC-V CPU.[33][34] At the same time, Intel's Foundry Service adopted P550 for use in its Horse Creek platform, a RISC-V development platform built on Intel's newest 7 nm process node,[35] Intel 4.[36] The announcement furthered speculation of a potential acquisition of SiFive by Intel, which reportedly offered to acquire SiFive for $2 billion.[37]

As part of SiFive's “relentless innovation” program, the company announced SiFive 21G2 update for the SiFive Essential family including 11% faster U74 cores.[38]

In March 2022, SiFive received $175 million in a Series F funding round led by Coatue Management, valuing the company at over $2.5 billion. This brought the total investment in SiFive to over $350 million.[39]

In October 2023, SiFive laid off approximately 20% (~140) of its 650 employees. SiFive reiterated their commitment to existing products and lines and stated that the company is "well funded for years in the future and continue to work".[40][41]

Products

[edit]
  • RISC-V cores: SiFive core series – The SiFive core IPs consists of three distinct families spanning from high-performance application processors to area-optimized, low-power embedded 64- and 32-bit microcontrollers, to vector processors. All SiFive processors are based upon the RISC-V ISA.
    • The SiFive Performance processor family are designed for higher throughput and performance.
    • The SiFive Intelligence family uses a software approach to processor design to address the future requirements of deploying machine learning technology to accelerate AI/ML applications.
    • The SiFive Essential family of processor cores spans from high-performance multi-core heterogeneous application processors to area-optimized, low-power embedded microcontrollers. SiFive Essential standard core microarchitectures are based on the RISC-V ISA to provide 64-bit and 32-bit options and can be configured using SiFive Core Designer to create custom configurations.
  • SoC IP – The SoC IP is customizable, or customers choose from memory interface IP, connectivity IP, or system and peripheral IP.
  • Custom SoC – Starting with an SoC template, users can create custom SoC designs to be optimized for power, performance, and area.
  • Boards and software – SiFive also produces the FE310 microcontroller, HiFive1, HiFive Unleashed, and other development boards and software.

DesignShare platform

[edit]

DesignShare was an open source platform for building prototypes. SiFive partnered with vendors to provide IP to customers designing custom chip prototypes without paying IP fees in advance. Once chip designs were ready for mass production, customers would pay for the IP. DesignShare partners included Brite Semiconductor, Rambus, Chipus Microelectronics, and more.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b "SiFive, Inc.: Private Company Information". Bloomberg. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
  2. ^ Cherney, Max A. (October 24, 2023). "Chip design startup SiFive lays off 20% of staff". Reuters.
  3. ^ a b "SiFive hires Qualcomm exec as CEO for RISC-V alternatives to Nvidia-Arm". VentureBeat. 2020-09-17. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  4. ^ a b Gurman, Mark (March 12, 2024). "Arm Rival SiFive Expects Licensing Revenue to Surge This Year". Bloomberg News.
  5. ^ Takahashi, Dean (October 11, 2023). "SiFive unveils two new high-performance RISC-V processors". VentureBeat.
  6. ^ a b Shilov, Anton (2016-07-18). "SiFive Unveils Freedom Platforms for RISC-V-Based Semi-Custom Chips". AnandTech. Archived from the original on July 19, 2016. Retrieved 2017-03-17.
  7. ^ a b c d Takahashi, Dean (2016-11-29). "SiFive launches open source RISC-V custom chip". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on October 21, 2022. Retrieved 2017-03-17.
  8. ^ Hall, Christine (2019-05-28). "Companies Pushing Open Source RISC-V Silicon Out to the Edge". Data Center Knowledge. Archived from the original on May 28, 2019. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  9. ^ McLellan, Paul (2016-12-05). "RISC-V Available in Silicon". Cadence. Archived from the original on August 16, 2018. Retrieved 2017-03-19.
  10. ^ "Custom processor maker SiFive appoints Intel veteran as CEO | VentureBeat". venturebeat.com. 2017-08-15. Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  11. ^ Verma, Adarsh (2017-10-09). "Linux Gets Its First Multi-Core, RISC-V Based Open Source Processor". Fossbytes. Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  12. ^ Farrell, Nick. "2018 will be the year of the RISC V Linux processors". Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  13. ^ "SiFive Introduces RISC-V Linux-Capable Multicore Processor". Hackaday. 2018-02-04. Retrieved 2018-02-05.
  14. ^ "SiFive Introduces HiFive Unleashed RISC-V Linux Development Board (Crowdfunding)". www.cnx-software.com. 4 February 2018. Retrieved 2018-02-05.
  15. ^ "SiFive Is Launching The Most Compelling RISC-V Development Board Yet - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  16. ^ Shilov, Anton (2021-04-13). "SiFive Tapes Out First 5nm TSMC RISC-V Chip With 7.2 Gbps HBM3". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 2024-10-22.
  17. ^ Mott, Nathaniel (2021-06-24). "Canonical Gives RISC-V a HiFive". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 2024-10-21.
  18. ^ "BSC, Codeplay and SiFive help accelerate applications on RISC-V thanks to V-extension support in LLVM". BSC-CNS. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  19. ^ "Intel Ends Talks to Acquire Arm Rival SiFive — for Now: Report | CRN".
  20. ^ "Intel Looking to Buy SiFive for $2bn". 14 June 2021.
  21. ^ Cherney, Max (October 25, 2023). Coates, Stephen; Reese, Chris (eds.). "Chip design startup SiFive lays off 20% of staff". Reuters. Archived from the original on October 25, 2023. Retrieved October 22, 2024.
  22. ^ "Cambridge United unveils SiFive as first team kit sponsor". Cambridge Independent. 2022-08-04. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
  23. ^ "SiFive arrives on the pitch in Cambridge". SiFive. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
  24. ^ Takahashi, Dean (May 8, 2017). "SiFive raises $8.5 million for licensable custom microprocessors". VentureBeat.
  25. ^ "SiFive raises $50.6 million for licensable custom microprocessors". VentureBeat. 2018-04-02. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  26. ^ "9 Bay Area startups raised over $300 million at week's end - Silicon Valley Business Journal". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  27. ^ Shilov, Anton. "Samsung to Use SiFive RISC-V Cores for SoCs, Automotive, 5G Applications". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  28. ^ Chan, Rosalie. "The star Apple engineer behind its Swift programming language just left Google and went to a new job at hot AI startup SiFive". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  29. ^ Nellis, Stephen (2020-08-11). "Arm rival SiFive raises $60 million from SK Hynix, Aramco". Reuters. Retrieved 2020-09-16.
  30. ^ "SiFive Launches OpenFive As Custom Silicon Business Unit For RISC-V, ARM, Other ISAs - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  31. ^ Williams, Chris. "What links AMD CPU guru Jim Keller, an AI chip upstart, and SiFive? This vector-crunching 64-bit RISC-V processor". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  32. ^ "SiFive Intelligence platform tapped by Tenstorrent and Renesas". LinuxGizmos.com. 2021-04-22. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  33. ^ Salter, Jim (2021-06-22). "SiFive's brand-new P550 is one of the world's fastest RISC-V CPUs". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  34. ^ "SiFive aims to challenge Arm with new tech, pairs with Intel on effort". Reuters. 2021-06-22. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  35. ^ Cutress, Dr Ian. "Intel to Create RISC-V Development Platform with SiFive P550 Cores on 7nm in 2022". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  36. ^ Cutress, Dr Ian. "Intel's Process Roadmap to 2025: with 4nm, 3nm, 20A and 18A?!". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  37. ^ "Chipmaker SiFive Is Said to Draw Intel Takeover Interest". Bloomberg.com. 2021-06-10. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  38. ^ "SiFive speeds up RISC-V U74 cores as Canaan unveils a 3-TOPS Kendryte K510". LinuxGizmos.com. 2021-07-30. Retrieved 2021-09-07.
  39. ^ "SiFive Leadership in RISC-V Powers $2.5B+ Company Valuation". businesswire.com. 16 March 2022.
  40. ^ Cutress, Ian (2023-10-24). "The Risk of Risc-V: What's Going On (Updated)". More Than Moore. Retrieved 2023-10-25.
  41. ^ "Arm Rival SiFive Expects Licensing Revenue to Surge This Year". Bloomberg.com. 2024-03-12. Retrieved 2024-03-17.
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