SiFive - April 13, 2021

SiFive RISC-V Proven in 5nm Silicon

OpenFive Tapes Out SoC for Advanced AI/HPC Solutions on TSMC 5nm Technology

Today, I am pleased to see OpenFive, a SiFive business unit that is the leading provider of customizable, silicon-focused solutions with differentiated IP, is continuing to make progress with AI design solutions with the creation of a reference design chiplet architecture using OpenFive Die-to-Die interface, OpenFive HBM3 IP subsystem, and SiFive 7-Series processor IP, for 2.5D-based SoCs. More details on the full announcement can be found on OpenFive’s announcement here, but today I want to call out the SiFive milestone of our first RISC-V processor core in 5nm.

The SiFive RISC-V-based processor portfolio is the broadest in the industry, from our upcoming SiFive Intelligence processor cores featuring RISC-V vector capabilities to area-optimized real-time cores. SiFive believes that it takes more than great processor IP to be successful in these markets by offering class-leading advanced trace and debug IP enabled by SiFive Insight. SiFive Insight is delivered pre-integrated with SiFive processor cores and gives customers the tools they need to develop sophisticated applications and is well supported by leading industry tool vendors, IAR Systems, Lauterbach, and SEGGER. Uniquely, SiFive Insight is compatible with Arm® Coresight™ to simplify the use of RISC-V in mixed-ISA environments.

SiFive addresses security needs with SiFive Shield, a pre-integrated, open, scalable platform architecture designed to enable whole SoC security for RISC-V designs. The SiFive Shield hardware cryptographic accelerator optionally enables the necessary elements to accelerate cryptography to securely boot an SoC, protect communications, and restrict access to the debug interface.

SiFive regularly updates the processor portfolio as part of our ‘relentless innovation’ program, including the SiFive 21G1 release announced recently. You can learn more about the latest features and improvements, including support for half-precision data types for AI applications, here.

Dr. Chris Lattner, president of engineering and product at SiFive, will present the latest information on SiFive Intelligence at the Linley Virtual Spring Processor Conference on April 23rd. SiFive’s vision is to take a ‘software-first’ approach to SiFive Intelligence products, delivering flexible acceleration strategies that scale with the evolving nature of AI. Find out more and register for the conference, here.

AI has created an explosion of diverse architectures, increasing the need for building heterogeneous SoCs and using advanced foundry technology. SiFive and OpenFive IP are proven in TSMC 5nm process technology enabling more choice for leading semiconductor companies to define their next-generation AI-powered products for 5G, automotive, data center, edge, high-performance compute, or networking applications.

To learn more about OpenFive’s idea-to-silicon methodology combined with TSMC 5nm capabilities to offer leading power-performance-area designs, please visit OpenFive.