By Majeed Ahmad, EDN (October 25, 2023)
SiFive, a prominent player in the RISC-V design arena, is going through a radical makeup. While layoffs at one of the early RISC-V startups are making headlines in trade media, what’s happening underneath is a significant shift in its business model.
The well-funded RISC-V upstart built its business around two product lines. First, pre-designed and silicon-proven RISC-V cores that designers can pick to develop their system-on-chips (SoCs). SiFive has been shipping these ready-made RISC-V cores along with a debugging tool that can be used to test the reliability of an SoC design before manufacturing.