Intel joins RISC-V, teams on foundry IP

Business news | February 7, 2022

By Nick Flaherty

RISC-V Intel

Intel has joined RISC-V International as a board member to collaborate on RISC-V IP and contribute engineering expertise for RISC-V in software and its in foundry services

The move comes with deals to make RISC-V technology for processor designers SiFive and Andes Technology as well as data centre chip designer Ventana Micro and accelerator designer Esperanto Technologies using its foundries.

Bob Brennan, Vice President of Customer Solutions Engineering for Intel Foundry Services, will be joining both the RISC-V Board of Directors and Technical Steering Committee.

“Intel is pleased to join the community in RISC-V International,” said Brennan. “A rich open source software and hardware ecosystem is critical for accelerating the growth and adoption of RISC-V and fully unlocking value for chip designers. Intel is delighted to support the growth of the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture. We look forward to optimizing IP for Intel process technologies to ensure that RISC-V runs best on IFS silicon across all types of cores, from embedded to high-performance.”

Intel is already using RISC-V for its Nios V processors for its FPGAs and plans to grow its investment through Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and has worked with SiFive.

IFS will sponsor an open-source software development platform that allows for freedom in experimentation, including partners across the ecosystem, universities, and consortia. The IFS strategy will provide a broad range of leadership intellectual property (IP) optimized for Intel process technologies.

“SiFive previously announced a collaboration with Intel using the SiFive Performance P550 processor to build a RISC-V development platform based on the Intel “Horse Creek” SoC that will be at the heart of a new RISC-V reference platform. We look forward to extending our relationship with IFS and their customers,” said Rohit Kumar, SVP Engineering at SiFive.

IFS is the only foundry to offer IP optimized for all three of the industry’s leading ISAs: x86, ARM and RISC-V and Intel says it has already seen strong demand from foundry customers to support more RISC-V IP offerings.

“Intel making available its state-of-the-art silicon processes and Open Chiplet Platform packaging technologies along with its formidable manufacturing capacity to Andes Technology and other RISC-V IP suppliers’ customers will greatly accelerate the widespread adoption of the open-source RISC-V ISA,” said Frankwell Lin, President and Co-founder Andes Technology

“Intel’s announcement indicates its strong support for the RISC-V Community, which will be invaluable in helping to advance and proliferate RISC-V solutions from Esperanto and others. This will benefit not just the fast-growing RISC-V ecosystem, but all end users of RISC-V technology across the industry,” said Art Swift, President and CEO at Esperanto Technologies.

“We are excited to announce our strategic partnership with Intel to make Ventana’s high-performance RISC-V cores and chiplets available through IFS to leading customers in the Data Center, 5G/Edge, Networking, Storage, AI/ML, Automotive and Client market verticals,” said Balaji Baktha, Founder and CEO of Ventana Micro

“The dependencies between software and hardware have become more intertwined,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, The Linux Foundation. “Recent decades have shown us how investment in open technology stacks and collaboration with a community creates tremendous value for everyone involved. Intel’s investment in an open source software development platform for RISC-V will contribute to this trend, creating a paradigm shift in the open source ecosystem.”

riscv.org/; www.intel.com

Intel joins RISC-V, teams on foundry IP

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