Recently intel announced via a blog post who has joined RISC-V at the Premier membership level and with which they plan the creation of a new fund, through which they plan to invest one billion dollars in companies and startups that create technologies related to the development of new instruction set architectures, open software development tools and methods innovative 3D chip design.
Since the arrival of Pat Gelsinger as CEO, the company has been making bets that previously seemed unthinkable. The most recent is to invest in type chips RISC-V, a standard until then far from their plans.
Intel has become a Premier Member of RISC-V International, whose representatives are given seats on the Board of Directors and Technical Committee.
With that Intel Capital and Intel Foundry Services (IFS) will invest primarily in chip IP, software tools, innovative chip architectures, and advanced packaging technologies.
Randhir Thakur, president of IFS, said that ehis new program will focus on two key strategic issues of the industry: enable modular products with an open chiplet platform and compatible design approaches that take advantage of multiple instruction set architectures, including and beyond x86, arm, and RISC-V.
“Foundry customers are rapidly adopting a modular design approach to differentiate their products and speed time to market. Intel Foundry Services is well positioned to lead this major industry inflection. With our new investment fund and open chiplet platform, we can help drive the ecosystem to develop disruptive technologies across the full spectrum of chip architectures.”
–Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel
In addition to funding work on third-party chips, Intel plans to create its own RISC-V cores which can be used as building blocks for chiplets.
chiplet technology aims to separate complex semiconductor blocks and delivering said blocks as separate modules, assembled using a system-on-package (SoP) paradigm rather than a system-on-chip (SoC) paradigm. It is planned that chiplet-related specifications (chiplet open platform) will be developed according to the open development model.
Saf Yeboah, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Intel, said:
“Intel Capital's history and experience are rooted in chips. Over the past 30 years, we've invested more than $5 billion in 120 companies that support the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, from the materials that come out of the ground to the software tools used to implement a design. Ranging from pioneering early-stage ventures to deeply strategic and collaborative investments, our investments drive innovation in architecture, intellectual property, materials, equipment and design.”
In addition to the use of RISC-V in chipsets, hybrid chip architectures are also mentioned, which combine blocks with different instruction set architectures (ISAs), such as RISC-V, ARM, and x86.
Together with Esperanto Technologies, it is planned to develop a prototype RISC-V system based on chipsets to speed up calculations for machine learning systems, and together with Ventana Micro Systems, prepare an accelerator for data centers and network infrastructures. The chiplet technology is also expected to be used in Intel CPUs based on the Meteor Lake microarchitecture.
It is worth mentioning that Intel already offers chips based on RISC-V, the Nios V processors, and in the future, Intel hopes that its new investment in RISC-V will accelerate the development of RISC-V.
Finally, it is also worth noting other international premieres of RISC-V which include SiFive, Syntacore, Western Digital, Google, Huawei, ZTE, StarFive, Andes, Ventana Micro and Alibaba Cloud. In addition to participating in RISC-V International, Intel also announced the establishment of alliances and collaborations with SiFive, Andes Technology, Esperanto Technologies, and Ventana Micro Systems, dedicated to the production and design of chips based on the RISC-V architecture.
If you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details in the following link