SiFive Expands and Improves Industry-Leading RISC-V Processor Portfolio

The SiFive 21G3 Release introduces the new SiFive Essential 6-Series range of RISC-V processors for area-focused computing applications

SAN MATEO, Calif., December 2, 2021 – SiFive, Inc., the founder and leader of RISC-V computing, today announced the availability of the SiFive 21G3 release, a comprehensive suite of product updates for the industry’s broadest and most successful RISC-V processor IP portfolio, and introduced the new SiFive Essential™ 6-Series range of RISC-V processor IP to address market demands for mid-range application capable and real-time processors. With the new SiFive Essential 6-Series, SiFive stretches further its leadership position in delivering the broadest portfolio of RISC-V processors to the market. The SiFive product portfolio scales from performance-leading state-of-the-art processors down to the most power-sensitive deeply embedded microcontrollers.

The new product line includes SiFive Essential U6, S6, and E6 processors to offer 64-bit Linux-capable, 64-bit real-time, and 32-bit real-time processors, respectively. SiFive Essential 6-Series processors leverage the widely-used and silicon-proven nature of the SiFive Essential™ 7-Series architecture and feature pre-configured product specifications that may be tuned towards applications such as general-purpose embedded, industrial, IoT, high-performance real-time embedded, and automotive applications.

Across the entire SiFive portfolio, the SiFive 21G3 Release introduces improved clock gating and power management, and adds SiFive Shield™ WorldGuard support to the Essential family. Additionally, SiFive Intelligence Extensions, as utilized by the SiFive Intelligence™ X280, now supports BFLOAT16 compute, quantization acceleration, and features improved multi-cluster support, to deliver significant performance improvements across a wide range of machine learning workloads. The SiFive Performance™ family now features the RISC-V Hypervisor extension.

“The SiFive 21G3 release demonstrates SiFive’s commitment to relentless innovation and continuous improvement,” said Chris Jones, Vice President of Products, SiFive. “The new SiFive Essential 6-Series focuses our offerings for mid-range performance, and enacts our vision for comprehensive processor solutions across all application domains. The SiFive Essential 6-Series, along with significant performance and feature enhancements to the Intelligence and Performance Series of products, solidifies SiFive’s standing as the leader in RISC-V.”

“SiFive’s introduction of its 6-Series processor cores expands the company’s 'Essential' family of processor cores and creates an even more comprehensive offering of application-tuned, 64- and 32-bit RISC-V processor cores, starting with high-end, multi-core application processors and extending all the way down to individual, low-power, embedded microcontrollers, which can all be customized to cover an even broader design spectrum.” – Steve Leibson, Principal Analyst, TIRIAS Research

Drew Barbier, Senior Director of Product Marketing, will discuss more details of the SiFive Essential 6-Series and SiFive 21G3 release in a presentation at the RISC-V Summit 2021, held December 6-8 in-person at the Moscone Center, and online.

About SiFive
As the pioneers who introduced RISC-V to the world, SiFive is transforming the future of compute by bringing the limitless potential of RISC-V to the highest performance and most data-intensive applications in the world. SiFive’s unrivaled compute platforms have enabled leading technology companies around the world to innovate, optimize and deliver the most advanced solutions of tomorrow across every market segment of chip design, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, automotive, data center, mobile, and consumer. With SiFive, the future of RISC-V has no limits. For more information, please visit www.sifive.com.