Today, RISC-V CPU design company SiFive launched a new processor family with two core designs: P270 (a Linux-capable CPU with full support for RISC-V’s vector extension 1.0 release candidate) and P550 (the highest-performing RISC-V CPU to date).
There’s quite a bit to unpack here today. Not only did SiFive announce these two new core designs, it also partnered with Intel. Intel will be the main development partner on the P550 core on Intel’s 7nm process, and most likely, Intel will also build its own SoCs using these P550 cores. In other words, there’s a lot of IP sharing going on here. This is a big step for both RISV-V and SiFive, and bodes well for the open source ISA as a whole.
I think Intel needs a good cash injection, and their failing 5nm process has been sucking money from the company like a leech sucks blood. Their 7nm process is tried and true, so by subletting production to 3rd parties seems an effective way to gain some much-needed income to counteract the ridiculous costs their R&D department must be eating up.
And on the subject of R&D, it’s not just process development that’s sucking the cash. I’d bet very heavily on the fact that Intel is working on a ground-up sucessor to the i-series architectures, given the massive success AMD have had with their Zen architectures, and security issues that have cropped up in most current-gen architectures.
Jeez, you make it sound like the world’s largest semiconductor company is about to go out of business….
Yeah, you’re right that R&D sucks up a lot of revenue, but not an issue for Intel. PC sales were up huge in the pandemic. I’m not sure if you were implying that the riscv partnership is a cash infusion,, but it is in no way large enough to even cover the intel investment in building out the new risc soc.
Last time I checked intel has in excess of $23 billion cash on hand, not counting other assets. I think they are ok.
R&D is hard, Building new sub 10nm fabs is hard. Getting Foveros market ready is hard. They stumbled, but I think they are far from dead.
Not only is Intel quite healthy, there are rumors about them buying SiFive.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-10/chipmaker-sifive-is-said-to-draw-intel-takeover-interest