August 14th, 2018, San Mateo, CA - Antmicro, a software-driven technology vendor for edge AI and cyber-physical systems, and SiFive, the first fabless semiconductor company to offer customized silicon based on the free and open RISC‑V Instruction Set Architecture, are announcing a milestone partnership to bring forth a complete offering for early adopters of RISC‑V.
The two RISC‑V Platinum Founding Members together provide competitive advantage for their common customers. SiFive’s world-first, Linux-enabled RISC‑V development board, the HiFive Unleashed, and the earlier HiFive1 development kit (as well as the corresponding FU540 and FE310 SoCs) are now both supported in Antmicro’s Renode open source framework, an emerging tool of choice for developing RISC‑V systems. By simulating not just the CPU, but entire SoCs in a highly configurable and modular framework, Antmicro’s Renode provides developers worldwide with an open, scalable methodology to start designing early RISC‑V projects and enables customers to build their virtual SiFive chip and develop software before going to production.
"With our customers continually looking for ways to shorten their time to market and deployment, we are excited to work with Antmicro and their Renode framework to provide a comprehensive solution covering build, debug and test in multi-node systems," said Brad Holtzinger, VP Sales for SiFive.
Antmicro and SiFive are working on common business cases, with SiFive offering ASIC design services to potential RISC‑V adopters and Antmicro providing assistance to those partners on the software, tooling and FPGA side for a comprehensive design experience. The collaboration also resulted with the RISC‑V Badge, a fully open source and extendible electronic badge jointly developed by Antmicro and SiFive for the 7th RISC‑V Workshop in Milpitas, CA.
"We are extremely happy to be working alongside some of the creators of RISC‑V to accelerate the open ISAs practical adoption," said Michael Gielda, VP Business Development at Antmicro. "Providing a first-class software development experience with open tools like Renode is going to highlight the unique value offered by the open and configurable silicon from SiFive."
The companies underline their shared views on the future of computing systems and propose a partner-focused approach for the RISC‑V ecosystem - a strategy that has been taking form in their common actions for some time now. With the partnership now formally confirmed, Antmicro and SiFive exhibit a step forward for RISC‑V to achieve the market maturity that stakeholders globally are expecting.
About Antmicro
Antmicro is a software-driven tech company developing leading edge cyber-physical and edge AI systems. Antmicro provides open tooling, new development methodologies and applied R&D for customers worldwide, offering assistance in prototyping, new product development and adoption of modern embedded technologies, both in hardware and software. The vast majority of Antmicro’s projects include a broad range of open source technologies such as RISC‑V, Renode, ROS, Tensorflow, Zephyr, Linux and Android. For more information visit antmicro.com and renode.io.
About SiFive
SiFive is the leading provider of market-ready processor core IP based on the RISC‑V instruction set architecture. Led by a team of industry veterans and founded by the inventors of RISC‑V, SiFive helps SoC designers reduce time-to-market and realize cost savings with customized, open-architecture processor cores, and democratizes access to optimized silicon by enabling system designers to build customized RISC‑V based semiconductors. SiFive is located in Silicon Valley and has venture backing from Sutter Hill Ventures, Spark Capital, Osage University Partners, Intel Capital and Chengwei Capital, along with strategic partners Huami, SK Telecom and Western Digital. For more information visit sifive.com.