RISC-V computing startup SiFive, Inc., announced two new products that address the need for high performance and efficiency in small-size, high-volume applications like wearables, smart-home devices, industrial automation, AR/VR, and other consumer devices.
The SiFive Performance™ P670 and P470 RISC-V processors bring unparalleled compute performance and efficiency that is significantly raising the bar for innovative designs in these high-volume markets. The modern and innovative SiFive design methodologies bring raw compute density that is a substantial advantage for SiFive Performance products and also translates into significant cost savings for customers, according to the press release.
"The P670 and P470 offer powerful performance and compute density for companies looking to upgrade from legacy ISAs," said Chris Jones, SiFive VP of Product. "We have optimized these new RISC-V Vector-enabled products to deliver the performance and efficiency improvements the industry has long been asking for, and we are in evaluations with a number of top-tier customers." Jones added that as the upstream enablement of RISC-V has started within the Android Open Source Project, (AOSP), designers will have unrivaled choice and flexibility as they consider the positive implications with that platform for future designs."
Industry leader comments
"We are excited to see RISC-V solutions for wearable and consumer devices becoming a reality, and we are looking at possibilities of integrating SiFive's latest products into Snapdragon platforms," said Ziad Asghar, Vice President, Product Management- Snapdragon Technologies and Roadmap at Qualcomm.
"Samsung's System LSI Business holds a wide portfolio of solutions for various applications, such as mobile, wearables and other consumer devices. We look forward to evaluating how the latest RISC-V innovations from SiFive can enhance our offerings," said Jinpyo Park, VP of the Innovative AP Development Team, Samsung Electronics System LSI Business.
"SiFive continues to be a market leader in the growing and maturing RISC-V space and again shows its leadership with its new SiFive Performance P670 and P470 RISC-V processors," said Todd R. Weiss, an analyst with Futurum Research. "These latest and powerful new processors give SiFive feature and performance advantages that will gain plenty of attention from device makers and consumers who want more from their devices. SiFive has been growing its reputation for some time and is truly ready to shake up the marketplace."
Features
The SiFive Performance P470 and P670 products offer a finely-tuned combination of compute-density, power efficiency, and robust feature sets ideal for a wide range of applications and markets:
Support for virtualization, including a separate IOMMU for accelerating virtualized device IOFull, Out-of-Order, RISC-V Vector implementation, based on the ratified RISC-V Vector v1.0 SpecificationFirst to market with the RISC-V Vector Cryptography extensionsSiFive WorldGuard system securityFull RISC-V RVA22 profile complianceNew, Advanced Interrupt Architecture (AIA) compliant interrupt controller, with better support for Message Signal Interrupts (MSI) and virtualizationEnhanced scalability with fully coherent multi-core, multi-cluster, with support for up to 16 cores
SiFive Performance P670
The P670 is ideal for applications like premium wearables, networking, robotics, and mobile. The P650, which excludes the vector unit, is already shipping to lead customers, and is being used in applications that do not require the additional capabilities that vector compute offers or are more area constrained.
The feature-rich P670 achieves a maximum frequency exceeding 3.4GHz in 5nm,has performance of greater than 12 SpecINT2k6/GHz, offering optimized performance in a constrained area and power envelope, offers higher single threaded performance and 2x compute density compared to legacy solutions, andincludes a 2x 128-bit Vector ALUs compliant with the ratified RISC-V Vector v1.0 specification
SiFive PerformanceTM P470
The P470 is SiFive's first efficiency-focused Out-of-Order, area optimized, vector processor, ideal for applications like wearables, consumer, and smart home devices. Expanding on the proven P500-Series, the P470 is significantly smaller than competing solutions and optimized to have best-in-class performance efficiency and area density. The P470 was designed to also serve as a companion to the P670 processor for demanding applications that require a sharing of compute resources while optimizing power consumption.
The P470 offers a significant upgrade to legacy efficiency cores, achieving a maximum frequency exceeding 3.4GHz in 5nm, and greater than 8 SpecINT2k6/GHz, within a minimal area and power envelope.
Other P470 features include: 4x compute density in comparison to leading competitorIncludes 1x 128-bit RISC-V Vector ALU compliant with the ratified RISC-V Vector v1.0 specification. SiFive will also release the P450 – an area-optimized version of the P470 that excludes the Vector Unit.
SiFive releases small-size high-performance processors for applications such as wearables. Credit: SiFive
