Intel Offers $2 Billion for RISC-V Chip Startup SiFive: Bloomberg
According to Bloomberg's sources, Intel has offered $2 billion for startup chip designer SiFive, though neither company has officially acknowledged the offer. SiFive is the leading designer of chips based on the open source RISC-V architecture that has coincidentally attracted much more interest in the wake of Nvidia's ongoing acquisition of Arm for $40 billion. The reports of the possible SiFive acquisition come on the heels of SiFive's announcement that it will collaborate with Intel's newly-christened foundry services.
SiFive, most recently valued at $500 million, is reportedly considering takeover offers from multiple firms and it may still choose to remain an independent outfit. Much of the new interest in SiFive and RISC-V stems from firms looking to avoid any potential pitfalls due to Nvidia's potential control of Arm.
RISC-V is an open source instruction set architecture (ISA) for RISC chips that discards the traditional notion of licensing fees associated with designing chips around a certain ISA, as we see with Arm. The ISA is maintained by the non-profit RISC-V International organization comprised of more than 1,000 members in 50 countries. RISC-V is most commonly used in microcontrollers and small, simple chips, which has earned it quite the industry uptake with companies like WD, which ships over two billion RISC-V controllers a year in its products. The RISC-V organization plans to evolve the standard to accommodate faster chips for high-performance applications in the future. Chinese chip firms have shown a keen interest in RISC-V chip designs in the wake of US restrictions on their use of Arm designs due to US national security interests. Naturally, RISC-V's open source licensing, which eschews fees, and the fact that the company is incorporated in Switzerland and doesn't "take a political position on behalf of any geography" is enticing to Chinese firms.
