The Risk of RISC-V: What’s Going on at SiFive? #RISCV @IanCutress
Dr. Ian Cutress is reporting seeing reports, now from multiple sources, that the major torch bearer of the RISC-V platform, a company known as SiFive and formed from the original architects of the RISC-V instruction set, has gone through some major changes.
RISC-V is well known as the royalty free alternative to other core architectures on the market. The idea is that anyone can pick up the architecture, build their own core out of it, add their own custom features to it, then build it without any royalty payments.
Through multiple sources, SiFive has instigated a large number of layoffs. Numbers vary, from 100 to 300+, but multiple sources confirm that most of the engineering team, especially the physical design engineers, sales, and product team. The management team have also been fired from what I’ve been told, leaving the founders and CEO Patrick Little at the helm.
The product portfolio is also being gutted. SiFive’s business always had two elements – predesigned cores you can pick up, most of which have already been silicon proved, and SiFive even announced two new cores literally only a week ago. The other half of the business is custom cores – where clients would approach the team with specific requirements and then SiFive would actually go and design it, to be installed into a full SoC. My contacts are telling me (although not to the same level of certainty as the layoffs) that the pre-designed core portfolio is no more. SiFive from now on it seems will only be working on custom cores.
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I hate to say but given US Congress recently threatened to explicitly add RISC-V to Chinese sanctions, I don’t know if they have many options. What was a great business model with thin margins risks being sunk in one blow if suddenly free open source information is subject to sanctions and cuts off an entire country from development. Hope they can keep it going.
I hate to say but given US Congress recently threatened to explicitly add RISC-V to Chinese sanctions, I don’t know if they have many options. What was a great business model with thin margins risks being sunk in one blow if suddenly free open source information is subject to sanctions and cuts off an entire country from development. Hope they can keep it going.