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[According] to Bloomberg, Intel has reportedly offered over $2 billion to acquire the fabless semiconductor SiFive, a provider of commercial RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture.
Should this deal become a reality, it would mark the climax of growing bonhomie between Intel and SiFive. For instance, back in 2018, Intel was one of the participants in the Series C funding round of SiFive. Thereafter, in March 2021, SiFive announced a collaboration with the Intel Foundry Business (IFB) to develop innovative new RISC-V computing platforms.
Of course, unlike legacy Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs), RISC-V's proponents believe that it addresses the skyrocketing cost of designing and manufacturing increasingly complex new chip architectures, given that that the ISA is layered, extensible, and flexible. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that some believe RISC-V to be the future.
Bear in mind that SiFive was last valued at $500 million, as per the data available at PitchBook. This means that Intel would be paying a premium of over 300 percent relative to SiFive's 2020 valuation.
Previously: SiFive HiFive Unleashed Not as Open as Previously Thought
Qualcomm Invests in RISC-V Startup SiFive
SiFive Announces a RISC-V Core With an Out-of-Order Microarchitecture
GlobalFoundries and SiFive Partner on High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2E)
SiFive to Debut a RISC-V PC for Developers in October
SiFive Announces HiFive Unmatched Mini-ITX Motherboard for RISC-V PCs
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @05:11PM (1 child)
I understand that Moore's Law has been used as a business plan, almost since it was stated -- you must increase device density (reduce transistor size) to stay competitive.
However, it seems like some relatively simple chips are now so cheap that perhaps there is reasonable business to be had without pushing on the latest and greatest high density technology. I'm thinking of things like calculators, small ECUs in cars that run the windshield wipers or windows, or even the processor in a basic microwave oven.
Are there fabs that are working to reduce the total delivered cost of this type of system on chip, without reducing line widths any further? Or does the cost of silicon so dominate the cost of the final product that going smaller still wins, even in this "commodity" part of the market?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Friday June 11 2021, @07:16PM
The latest and greatest nodes already aren't used for those products.
There can be an argument for going to smaller nodes [anandtech.com] to increase power efficiency [anandtech.com], but if something is running at xyz MHz, it probably doesn't matter.
If you want to see overkill in a microwave, Farberware recently put a Rockchip RK3308 quad-core Cortex-A35 in one to run Linux for an offline voice assistant. All other microwaves are going to have some far weaker computer in it.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GEdTiVkAOTIJ:https://soylentnews.org/article.pl%3Fsid%3D21%252F05%252F07%252F1531205%26from%3Drss+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us [googleusercontent.com]
https://jaycarlson.net/embedded-linux/#rk3308 [jaycarlson.net]
https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/07/23/rockchip-rk3308-rk3326-datasheet/ [cnx-software.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]