SiFive launches RISC-V processor cores for real-time applications

SiFive wants to exploit the commercial opportunities of RISC-V, an open chip architecture that challenges more-closed rivals, such as Arm and Intel. Today it is announcing the availability of its SiFive Core IP 7 Series.

These high-performance RISC-V cores are designed for embedded devices and real-time applications. The 7 Series includes the E7, S7 and the U7 series. The SiFive Core IP E7 Series provides a heterogeneous, customizable architecture with hard real-time capabilities, and the SiFive Core IP S7 series brings high performance 64-bit architectures to the embedded markets, while the SiFive Core IP U7 Series is a Linux-capable applications processor with a highly configurable memory architecture for domain-specific customization.

Together, the SiFive E7, S7 and U7 Core IP Series will enable the next generation of RISC-V cores that will power 5G, networking, storage, augmented reality, virtual reality, simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM), and sensor fusion functionality.

The cores offer efficient performance and optimized power consumption, appropriate for supporting smart offloads of datacenter workloads, as well as those of extremely power-efficient edge devices.

“We selected SiFive Core IP due to its best-in-class performance, as it was a third the power and a third the area of competing solutions,” said Fadu CEO Jihyo Lee in a statement. “As we target our next generation of advanced memory products, we look forward to seeing SiFive’s 7 Series Core IP bringing truly heterogeneous architectures, customizable 64-bit capability, and intelligence to the embedded space.”

The SiFive 7 Series provides scalable throughput with by 8+1 cores per cluster, 64-bit memory addressability for real-time processors, and in-cluster coherent combination of real-time processors and application processors. These features are currently not available from any other CPU vendors and are unique to SiFive’s Core IP series of processors.

SiFive has 300 employees. The company has raised $63.8 million from investors that include Sutter Hill Ventures, Spark Capital, Osage University Partners, and Chengwei Capital, along with strategic partners Huami, SK Telecom, Western Digital, and Intel Capital.