RISC-V Ecosystem Surpasses 100 Members Globally, Paving the Way for the Next 50 Years of Computing Design and Innovation

RISC-V Foundation Continues Ecosystem Growth with 120 Percent Increase in Membership Since November 2016

Berkeley, Calif. – Nov. 7, 2017 – The RISC-V Foundation, a non-profit corporation controlled by its members to drive the adoption and implementation of the open, free RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) forward, today announced that the Foundation’s membership has exceeded more than 100 organizations, individuals, academics and universities from 19 countries and six continents around the world. Since its inception in 2015, RISC-V has quickly evolved its ecosystem to feature established technology giants and emerging startups all working together to enable a wide range of open-source and proprietary RISC-V hardware and software solutions. This milestone marks a more than 120 percent year-over-year membership growth since November 2016.

RISC-V is the first to offer an alternative to the existing closed and costly ISAs. It’s because of this freedom that the RISC-V ecosystem continues to rapidly grow, empowering startups and enterprises to innovate quickly without expensive and timely contract negotiations from proprietary ISA suppliers. As a result, members are solving some of today’s most complex design challenges including security, performance, power, efficiency, flexibility and more.

“RISC-V membership is moving at an exceptionally fast pace and it’s at this speed that we’re also witnessing new RISC-V designs, implementations and products hitting the market regularly,” said Rick O’Connor, executive director of the non-profit RISC-V Foundation. “Surpassing 100 members is a huge success for the RISC-V community that is comprised of multiple committees, chairs, technical and marketing groups, not to mention the in-house member projects. The Foundation appreciates the support and momentum from our members and looks forward to continuing our work together.”

RISC-V members are located across six continents, with members representing countries including the United States, Canada, Germany, India, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, among others. Platinum members include Bluespec, Cortus, C-SKY, Google, Huawei, Micron, Microsemi, NVIDIA, NXP, Qualcomm, Rambus, Samsung, SiFive, UC Berkeley and Western Digital Corporation.

To become a member today, visit: https://riscv.org/membership-application/.

RISC-V is hosting its 7^th Workshop Nov. 28 – 30, 2017 at the Western Digital campus in Milpitas (951 SanDisk Dr., Milpitas, Calif., 95035). To register for the event, please visit: https://riscv.org/2017/09/7th-risc-v-workshop-registration/

To learn more about the RISC-V Foundation, its open, free architecture and membership information, please visit: https://riscv.org.

Quotes From the RISC-V Foundation Board of Directors

Said Charlie Hauck, CEO of Bluespec, Inc.: “The RISC-V architecture continues to not only meet, but exceed market expectations. I’ve witnessed the power of the open, free ISA within my own organization building and bringing to market new ASICs and FPGAs built on the architecture. I’m excited to witness not only the success of Bluespec, but that of all other member organizations.”

“RISC-V is in my DNA and the recent success of its membership is a great achievement and a proof point of RISC-V’s long-term market implications. This is only the beginning for the ecosystem,” said Dave Patterson, Researcher at Google.

“Microsemi is an enthusiastic proponent of RISC-V and the company is committed to cultivating an ecosystem that builds, creates and innovates together,” said Ted Speers, Head of Product Architecture and Planning for Microsemi’s Programmable Solutions Business Unit. “We’re working closely with several members on our new Mi-V™ ecosystem to increase adoption of RISC-V by providing customers with all the tools and cores necessary to build RISC-V based subsystems into their products.”

Said Frans Sijstermans, Vice President of Engineering at NVIDIA: “The work being done by the RISC-V ecosystem must not go unnoticed and will continue to drive the new computing platform moving forward. One hundred members is only the beginning with new innovators using the ISA nearly daily.”

“NXP is excited with this milestone and proud to be a Platinum Member,” said Senior Director, Software R&D, Microcontrollers at NXP, Rob Oshana. “In addition to the ongoing evolution of the RISC-V ISA, we are looking forward to the growth in the software ecosystem for RISC-V, as well as increased momentum in learning and educational opportunities for RISC based architectures. As the membership continues to grow, we’ll only witness more and more innovation.”

“The reason we’re witnessing continued success with RISC-V is because it’s a free and open ISA developed by the community. This openness allows us to harness some of industry and academia’s most brilliant minds to help improve the architecture, and also frees implementors to develop efficient open-source hardware designs for new cutting-edge applications. Quality, flexibility, low cost, but above all the community, are what set RISC-V apart from proprietary ISAs,” said Krste Asanović, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Open source architecture provides a springboard for greater flexibility of design and pace of innovation, as demonstrated by the efforts of RISC-V members since its foundation just two years ago,” said Dr. Zvonimir Bandic, Senior Director of next generation platforms architecture at Western Digital. “We congratulate RISC-V on this exciting milestone and look forward to continuing to work with fellow members, partners and customers to leverage the benefits of the RISC-V architecture to address the increasing demands of Big Data and Fast Data applications and workloads.”

About RISC-V Foundation

RISC-V (pronounced “risk-five”) is an open, free ISA enabling a new era of processor innovation through open standard collaboration. Founded in 2015, the RISC-V Foundation comprises more than 100 member organizations building the first open, collaborative community of software and hardware innovators powering innovation at the edge forward. Born in academia and research, RISC-V ISA delivers a new level of free, extensible software and hardware freedom on architecture, paving the way for the next 50 years of computing design and innovation.

The RISC-V Foundation, a non-profit corporation controlled by its members, directs the future development and drives the adoption of the RISC-V ISA. Members of the RISC-V Foundation have access to and participate in the development of the RISC-V ISA specifications and related HW / SW ecosystem.