SiFive
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Semiconductor |
| Founded | September 2015 |
| Founder | Krste Asanović, Yunsup Lee, Andrew Waterman |
| Headquarters | Santa Clara, California , United States |
Key people | Patrick Little (CEO) |
| Products | RISC-V processor cores, SoCs, IP blocks, development kits |
Number of employees | 500 (2023) |
| Website | www |
SiFive, Inc. is a U.S.-based fabless semiconductor firm specializing in commercial RISC-V processors and silicon chips built upon the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). Its offerings encompass processor cores, SoCs, intellectual property (IP) assets, and development kits.
Established in September 2015 by Krste Asanović, Yunsup Lee, and Andrew Waterman, SiFive ranks among the pioneers to manufacture chips utilizing the RISC-V ISA. The company’s headquarters are located in Santa Clara, California, with a workforce of around 500 employees as of 2023. Patrick Little currently serves as CEO.
In 2023, SiFive generated revenues totaling US$38.1 million but reported a net loss of US$113 million, indicative of its continued investments in advancing RISC-V technology and expanding market reach.
History
SiFive was founded in 2015 by UC Berkeley researchers Krste Asanović, Yunsup Lee, and Andrew Waterman. On November 29, 2016, the company launched the Freedom Everywhere 310 SoC alongside the HiFive development board, marking the first commercially available chip implementing the RISC-V ISA.
Naveed Sherwani assumed the CEO role in August 2017. By October that year, SiFive introduced a limited release of the U54-MC—a 64-bit quad-core CPU based on RISC-V architecture capable of running operating systems such as Linux.
In June 2018, SiFive expanded its ASIC design capabilities through the acquisition of Open-Silicon. Earlier that year, in February, it unveiled the HiFive Unleashed development board featuring a 64-bit SoC equipped with four U54 cores.
Patrick Little took over as CEO in September 2020. That year also saw the debut of the HiFive Unmatched Mini-ITX development board, which includes four U74-MC cores, one S7 core, 8GB DDR4 memory, multiple USB 3.2 Gen1 ports, PCI Express slots, a microSD card reader, and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. In April 2021, SiFive taped out its inaugural system-on-chip fabricated using TSMC’s N5 process—the first RISC-V device produced on a 5 nm technology node.
In June 2021, Canonical announced Ubuntu OS support for both HiFive Unmatched and HiFive Unleashed platforms. Additionally, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center collaborated with Codeplay Software and SiFive to integrate support for RISC-V V-extension v0.10 within LLVM, thereby enhancing vector processing capabilities.
During mid-2021, reports emerged regarding Intel’s potential acquisition of SiFive; however, negotiations were terminated due to unresolved differences. Facing market headwinds in 2023, SiFive implemented layoffs affecting approximately one-fifth of its workforce.
For the 2022/23 and 2023/24 EFL League One seasons, SiFive acted as principal sponsor for Cambridge United F.C.
Business development
SiFive secured $5 million in Series A funding in September 2015 and followed up with an $8.5 million Series B round in May 2017.
In April 2018, it raised $50.6 million during Series C financing with substantial backing from Intel Capital. By June 2019, a $65.4 million Series D round led by existing investors including Sutter Hill Ventures, Chengwei Capital, Spark Capital, Osage University Partners, Huami, alongside newcomer Qualcomm Ventures, brought total funding to $125 million.
At the Linley Fall Processor Conference in October 2019, SiFive introduced SiFive Shield—a platform security architecture. Later that December, it launched SiFive Apex cores targeting mission-critical applications and SiFive Intelligence cores designed for vector processing tasks. In that same month, Samsung announced plans to integrate SiFive RISC-V cores into SoCs for automotive and 5G use cases.
January 2020 saw Chris Lattner—known for creating LLVM and Swift—join SiFive as Senior Vice President of Platform Engineering following his tenure at Google.
A $60 million Series E investment round led by SK Hynix and Saudi Aramco closed in August 2020, increasing total capital raised to $186 million. Concurrently, SiFive established OpenFive as a dedicated business unit concentrating on processor-agnostic custom SoC design services.
In October 2020, AI chipmaker Tenstorrent, headed by former AMD CTO Jim Keller, licensed SiFive’s Intelligence X280 cores for AI training and inference applications. Additionally, Renesas Electronics partnered with SiFive to co-develop automotive semiconductor designs.
June 2021 marked the release of a new processor lineup featuring P270 (Linux-capable) and P550—the highest-performing RISC-V CPU developed by SiFive. Intel adopted the P550 core for its Horse Creek platform fabricated on its advanced Intel 4 (7 nm) process node—further fueling speculation about Intel’s interest in acquiring SiFive with rumored offers reaching $2 billion.
Under its “relentless innovation” initiative, SiFive rolled out the 21G2 update to its Essential processor family delivering an approximate 11% performance increase for U74 cores.
In March 2022, SiFive completed a $175 million Series F funding round led by Coatue Management, which valued the company above $2.5 billion and pushed total investment beyond $350 million.
By October 2023, facing ongoing market challenges, SiFive reduced its staff by roughly 20% (around 140 employees), while reaffirming its commitment to current product lines and emphasizing robust financial support for future endeavors.
Products
- RISC-V cores: SiFive core lineup – SiFive provides three distinct core categories that encompass high-performance application processors, area-efficient low-power embedded 64-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers, as well as vector processors, all built upon the RISC-V instruction set architecture.
- The SiFive Performance series is designed for high throughput and enhanced processing power.
- The SiFive Intelligence series emphasizes software-driven architectures aimed at accelerating artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads.
- The SiFive Essential series features multi-core heterogeneous application processors alongside low-power embedded microcontrollers, which can be tailored through the SiFive Core Designer tool to meet specific requirements.
- SoC IP – A portfolio of customizable intellectual property blocks including memory interfaces, connectivity modules, system components, and peripheral units.
- Custom SoC – Provides the capability to develop tailored SoC designs optimized for power efficiency, performance, and chip area by leveraging predefined templates.
- Boards and software – Supplies development kits such as the FE310 microcontroller, HiFive1, HiFive Unleashed boards, and associated software tools.
DesignShare functioned as an open innovation platform allowing clients to prototype custom semiconductor chips without initial IP licensing costs. Collaborators like Brite Semiconductor, Rambus, and Chipus Microelectronics contributed IP resources; customers incur fees only upon transitioning to volume production.