Leading the RISC-V Revolution, SiFive Aims to Take the Computing Industry Throne

Moore's Lobby · 27 Feb 2024 · 1h 02m · Episode 4

What this episode covers

Jack Kang, Senior Vice President at SiFive and a founding team member, discusses his career trajectory from designing CPUs at Marvell and NVIDIA (working on the Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Switch) to joining the startup. He explains how SiFive leverages the open RISC-V standard to offer high-performance, low-power processors for applications ranging from wearables to data centers, aiming to disrupt the proprietary ARM and x86 markets. Kang highlights the strategic advantage of RISC-V's modularity and openness, particularly in automotive and AI, where rapid innovation requires flexible, programmable hardware solutions rather than fixed, legacy architectures.

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • EE Times Current · 31m

    RISC-V Reaches Adolescence

    Kevin Krewell, principal analyst at Tirias Research, discusses the state of the RISC-V ecosystem following the 2021 RISC-V Summit, highlighting its emergence as a viable competitor to x86 and Arm architectures. He details how companies like Imagination Technologies and SiFive are leveraging the open instruction set to build CPU cores, while the RISC-V International Foundation works to standardize the ecosystem through new profiles and platforms to prevent fragmentation. Krewell also notes the significant enthusiasm for RISC-V in China due to its neutral governance and open nature, which offers an alternative to Western-controlled technologies.

  • EE Times Current · 6m

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  • The Circuit · 40m

    Episode 21: A Discussion on RISC-V with Calista Redmond CEO of RISC-V International

    Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, explains that RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) rather than open-source software, providing a frozen, global standard that prevents vendor lock-in while allowing companies to add proprietary extensions. She details how the organization manages diversity through 70 work groups and a single core ISA to avoid fragmentation, while major industry players like NVIDIA, Intel, Google, and MediaTek contribute to the ecosystem. Redmond highlights the recent Rise fund as a critical accelerator for software toolchains and operating systems, noting that the primary hurdle is now timing and ecosystem readiness across diverse markets from embedded to data center AI.

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