The Design Revolution in APAC and Australia

Highlights From the SiFive Tech Symposiums

In its endeavor to educate the tech world about the benefits of the RISC-V ISA, SiFive just completed its APAC and Australia series of tech symposiums. Throughout the month of June, symposiums were held in Tokyo, Daejeon, Pangyo, Hsinchu, Singapore and Sydney. The audience included academia, the business industry, and many RISC-V ecosystem partners. On average, in all seven cities, 60% of the audience came from the tech industry and 40% belonged to academia/universities. Pangyo, Hsinchu, Sydney and Tokyo witnessed a record number of turnouts. Hsinchu had over 460 registrations. Attendees said they were intrigued by the potential of the RISC-V architecture displayed through the AI demos by the SiFive team. Ecosystem partners' demos also pulled the crowd and engaged them. During the breaks and networking hours, there was lively and enthusiastic interaction between speakers and inquisitive audiences. During the question and answer sessions after each presentation, the speakers were faced with both basic-level and high-level questions on both the technical and business front. In addition to the growing number of attendees in 2019, the SiFive Tech Symposiums have also attracted numerous partnerships from high profile ecosystem partners, including the following:

The Highlights:

We are continually impressed and inspired by our ecosystem partners and the magnitude of the RISC-V revolution. All stakeholders are working in tandem with a common goal of the proliferation of RISC-V. All support the SiFive Tech Symposium as a key platform for meeting their RISC-V objectives.

One of the many highlights was a presentation by Mark Throndson, Sr. Director of Product Management at SiFive. He logged into SiFive's Core Designer to demonstrate how easy it is for anyone to build their own customized CPU core on the fly. This demonstration showed the audience the user-friendliness and the results delivered by the tool.

Another highlight was hearing about the RISC-V based research taking place at the National University of Singapore. Assistant Professor Trevor Carlson, spoke about the interesting work going on in the university's Department of Computing, and he expressed his interest in working with SiFive.

Another very interesting presentation was by Anand Bariya, VP of engineering at SiFive. He spoke about SiFive's new initiative, the "SiFive Learn" program at both the National University of Singapore and the University of Sydney. This program provides short and long-term (10+ years) education that spans K-12, higher education, professional/corporate learning, and even individuals, such as hobbyists. It focuses on democratizing access to computer architecture education and supports the next generation of innovators and dreamers through inspiring programs.

Last but not least, one attraction at all symposiums that always keeps the audience captive is the video: Design Your Own CPU!!

We'd like to thank each of our co-hosts and partners for joining us in fostering education, innovation, networking and idea sharing within the global open-source community. We are grateful for their support and we are humbled to share in the collaborative success that open source brings to the hardware community.

After the success of the APAC and Sydney symposiums, we are heading to India and Bangladesh in August. To learn more, or to register for the event closest to you, please visit www.sifivetechsymposium.com.

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