The Incredible Opportunity For SiFive

A note from SiFive President & CEO, Patrick Little

I’m honored to join SiFive to lead the brilliant, hard-working team of innovators and engineers who are responsible for creating some of the most impactful architectures in the technology industry. Ten years ago, an inspired team of computer scientists set out to invent a better way for hardware and software to talk to each other, free of legacy overhead and unencumbered by complexity, bringing the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture to life.

Five years later, encouraged by worldwide grassroots support, that same team launched SiFive and the RISC-V International organization, creating an inclusive and truly open business model for the technology industry to solve their computing challenges. RISC-V International is comprised of leading technology companies and scientists, enabling member companies and individual contributors to openly collaborate on the development and extension of the ISA.

I’m just beginning to get to know the team and I’m immediately impressed by the passionate culture of SiFive, extending a warm welcome and demonstrating a rare energy of innovation and excellence that I’m excited to become a part of. Over the coming quarter, we’ll get to know each other better as we accelerate into the next phase of growth for the company, leveraging the inflection point that has coincided with my decision to join SiFive.

The Moment Is Now
Across the technology industry, a sharpened focus on workload-acceleration to solve next-generation computing challenges is driving demand for SiFive’s configurable RISC-V-based platforms. The industry wants choice in an open and free market that grants them control over their roadmaps, features, and partners; a choice that SiFive offers.

I’m excited to see the increase in focus on SiFive’s industry-leading RISC-V-based portfolio. SiFive continues to drive the adoption of RISC-V for application and embedded designs, using our portfolio of configurable RISC-V-based microarchitectures with unique features such as pre-integrated security and advanced trace and debug capabilities, and the ability to mix and match cores in a heterogenous complex. We support this with a software and tool package to create a platform our customers can use to drive their own success.

Investing In The Roadmap
We’ll also continue to work hard on bringing our next-generation processor architectures to market, including the upcoming SiFive Intelligence processor architecture that tightly integrates vector capabilities into the scalar processor core. This tightly-integrated core, using a single ISA, enables a range of solutions for intense computational challenges, from deep learning in the data center to image, video, or audio processing at the edge.

We’ll have more details on this at the Linley Group Fall Virtual Processor Conference, where Dr. Krste Asanovic, RISC-V co-inventor, SiFive co-founder and Chief Architect, will give a deep dive on the platform.

To further enable professional developers, SiFive will launch a new HiFive board this year, to stand alongside the Microchip PolarFire SoC for developing RISC-V applications and solutions. The new SiFive HiFive board will be based on the upcoming SiFive FU740 SoC, details of which Dr. Yunsup Lee, RISC-V co-inventor, SiFive co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, will present at the Linley Group Fall Virtual Processor Conference. You can learn more about SiFive's presence at the conference here.

What’s Your RISC-V Strategy?
Across the industry, technology and semiconductor companies are constantly evaluating the best new platform choice for their next-generation products. SiFive’s industry-leading RISC-V technology portfolio, combined with the talent and passion of this team, provides what we need to enable solutions for the workload-focused challenges of our customers to be successful.

SiFive has consistently had a wide range of market opportunities and that is true now more than ever. We’re ready to work hard, identify the best customer opportunities, and build the products that will enable the most amazing new experiences in the industry. Let’s go change the world, SiFive!!!

• Patrick