The Rise of RISC-V: A Collaborative Success Story in the Semiconductor Industry

Over the past few years, RISC-V has emerged as the third largest Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), following the footsteps of RISC architecture's complex instruction set design route. This success is a testament to the collective efforts of IP vendors, design companies, foundations, and the unwavering support from foundries. Today, most foundries have already produced and mass-produced RISC-V chips, establishing deep collaborations with numerous design companies.

TSMC: Leading the Way in Advanced Logic Processes

As the industry leader in foundry services, TSMC is the preferred choice for many RISC-V chip design companies. Over the past few years, TSMC has produced several 5nm and 7nm RISC-V chips, enabling companies like Alibaba's Pingtouge and SiFive to achieve optimal performance with their high-performance cores. Both companies successfully taped out on TSMC's 7nm and 5nm platforms in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

TSMC's dominance in advanced logic process maturity is evident in its popularity, particularly for high-performance AI RISC-V chips. For instance, Meta's MTIA V2 chip, a RISC-V inference chip based on TSMC's 7nm process, provides a perfect balance of compute power, memory bandwidth, and capacity for Meta's ranking and recommendation models.

Ventana's Veyron V1, a data center-grade RISC-V CPU launched last year, also utilizes TSMC's 5nm process. With a maximum core configuration of up to 128 cores and a clock speed of 3.6GHz, Ventana's V1 demonstrates the potential of RISC-V to rival x86 and Arm in performance, leveraging TSMC's advanced processes to accelerate its performance development.

Samsung: Expanding Horizons in RISC-V Manufacturing

Last year, Samsung announced its collaboration with Tenstorrent to provide Chiplet manufacturing services for AI processors and AI/RISC-V IP products. Samsung's expansion plans include building new advanced process foundries in the US, supported by the US Chips Act. These foundries, expected to produce 4nm and 2nm process chips, will support the manufacturing of RISC-V chips domestically.

In addition to chip manufacturing, Samsung is also investing in RISC-V chip design. Reports indicate that Samsung has established a new R&D department in Silicon Valley focused on developing RISC-V AI chips, initially targeting LLM chips before expanding to general-purpose AI computing chips. Furthermore, Samsung's involvement in the RISE Alliance underscores its commitment to advancing the RISC-V software ecosystem.

Intel: Equal Footing for x86, Arm, and RISC-V

To attract more customers to its IDM 2.0 model, Intel has given equal importance to x86, Arm, and RISC-V since the launch of its IFS foundry services. Intel collaborates with EDA/IP vendors to provide comprehensive design, manufacturing, and packaging technologies for all three architectures, ensuring optimal PPA (performance, power, area) for RISC-V chips manufactured by IFS.

Currently, companies like Andes Technology, Esperanto, SiFive, and Ventana Micro Systems are Intel's partners. Intel has also joined the RISC-V International Foundation. Although IFS has yet to offer its most advanced processes, future advancements in IFS's manufacturing capabilities will provide another viable option for the RISC-V ecosystem.

Rapidus: A New Entrant from Japan

Japan's Rapidus has recently joined the ranks of advanced fabs supporting RISC-V chip manufacturing. Rapidus recently signed a memorandum of understanding with RISC-V vendor Esperanto, known for developing high-performance, energy-efficient RISC-V AI chips. Esperanto's ET-SoC-1, based on TSMC's 7nm process, integrates over a thousand RISC-V cores.

In addition to Esperanto, Rapidus also partnered with Tenstorrent last year to collaborate on Chiplet technology for developing next-generation edge AI accelerators. Rapidus's IIM-1 factory construction, which began last September, is expected to enter trial production next April and mass production by 2027, leveraging EUV machines to become Japan's first facility supporting 2nm or more advanced logic semiconductor manufacturing.

Conclusion

The RISC-V ecosystem has made significant strides in chip design and software development, with an increasing number of manufacturing options available. RISC-V is no longer limited to embedded applications and low-power chips. We can expect to see more high-performance RISC-V chips in servers, automotive, and consumer electronics markets, driven by the collaborative efforts of the semiconductor industry.

By [Utmel Electronics], GLOBAL LEADING ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS DISTRIBUTOR

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