SiFive
 | |
| Industry | Semiconductor Design[1] |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2015[1] |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California[1] |
Key people |
Stefan A. Dyckerhoff (Chief Executive Officer) |
| Website | sifive.com |
SiFive is a fabless semiconductor company that produces computer chips based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture.[2] Their business model is focused on developing semi-custom silicon for other companies, especially smaller businesses.[3] SiFive's current products include the Freedom Everywhere 310, a RISC-V based system on a chip, and the HiFive development board.[3]
History
SiFive was founded in 2015 by Krste Asanovic, Yunsup Lee, and Andrew Waterman, three researchers from the University of California Berkeley who played a role in inventing RISC-V.[2][3] On November 29, 2016, SiFive released the Freedom Everywhere 310 SoC and the HiFive development board at the fifth RISC-V workshop.[3] This makes SiFive the first company to produce a chip that implements that RISC-V ISA, although universities have produced earlier RISC-V processors.[3][4]
In May 2017, SiFive announced that they received $8.5 million in funding primarily from Spark Capital, which increased the company's total funding to $13.5 million.[5][6] In August, the company announced receiving an additional $5.1 million from an undisclosed source.[7]
Products
SiFive's business model is based on designing custom computer chips for other businesses, especially smaller companies who cannot afford to design computer chips on their own.[2][3] SiFive is also selling the FE310 microcontroller and the HiFive1 development board. Another family of processors, called Freedom Unleashed, is in development.
Freedom Everywhere 310
The Freedom Everywhere 310, also called the FE310, is an open-source RISC-V microcontroller based on the Freedom Everywhere platform.[8] It is designed for embedded, Internet of things, and wearable devices. The chip implements the RV32IMAC instruction set[9] and is fabricated on TSMC's 180 nm process. It can run at up to 320 MHz with a per-clock performance of 1.61 Dhrystone MIPS per MHz. It contains a 16 KB scratchpad SRAM and a 16 KB instruction cache. The processor was designed in Chisel, and the code for it is publicly available.[8] The FE310 microcontroller is currently not available to the public as a separate part.[8]
HiFive1
The HiFive1 is an Arduino-compatible development board with an FE310 processor, intended to make it easier for developers to write software for the FE310 and come up with specifications for custom FE310 chips.[3][8] The HiFive1 can be used with the Arduino IDE.[8]
Freedom Unleashed
Freedom Unleased is a 64-bit processor design intended for applications such as custom accelerators, networked devices, and SSD controllers. It is expected to become available at a future date.[4]
References
- 1 2 3 4 "SiFive, Inc.: Private Company Information". Bloomberg. Retrieved 17 March 2017.
- 1 2 3 Shilov, Anton (2016-07-18). "SiFive Unveils Freedom Platforms for RISC-V-Based Semi-Custom Chips". AnandTech. Retrieved 2017-03-17.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Takahashi, Dean (2017-11-29). "SiFive launches open source RISC-V custom chip". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2017-03-17.
- 1 2 McLellan, Paul (2015-05-21). "RISC-V Available in Silicon". Cadence. Retrieved 2017-03-19.
- ↑ Takahashi, Dean (8 May 2017). "SiFive raises $8.5 million for licensable custom microprocessors". VentureBeat. Retrieved 6 August 2017.
- ↑ "SiFive Secures $8.5 Million Series B Funding to Advance RISC-V Based Semiconductors". SiFive. Retrieved 2017-08-06.
- ↑ "Semiconductors Startup SiFive Secures $5.1 Million". NewsCenter.io. 2 August 2017. Retrieved 6 August 2017.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Ahmad, Majeed (2015-12-05). "SiFive’s Freedom Everywhere 310 SoC based on open RISC-V architecture". www.electronicproducts.com. Retrieved 2017-03-19.
- ↑ "$59 HiFive1 Arduino Compatible Board is Powered by Sifive Open Source RISC-V MCU (Crowdfunding)". CNXSoft. 2016-11-30. Retrieved 2017-03-19.