Ubitium announces development of 'universal' processor that combines CPU, GPU, DSP, and FPGA functionalities – RISC-V powered chip slated to arrive in two years
The semiconductor industry produces many kinds of distinct processors, but RISC-V startup Ubitium says it’s working on a single architecture that can rule them all.
Emerging from stealth sometime this year, Ubitium has gone public to announce the development of its Universal Processor, which is based on a “workload-agnostic microarchitecture.”
“Our Universal Processor does it all – CPU, GPU, DSP, FPGA – in one chip, one architecture. This isn’t an incremental improvement. It is a paradigm shift. This is the processor architecture the AI era demands,” Ubitium CEO Hyun Shin Cho says.
The Universal Processor is based on the RISC-V architecture, traditionally used for CPUs. However, Ubitium’s upcoming chip isn’t something like AMD’s MI300A or Nvidia’s Grace-Hopper Superchip, which combine distinct CPU and GPU chips into one package. Instead, Ubititum claims all of the transistors in its Universal Processor can be reused for everything; no “specialized cores” like those in CPUs and GPUs are required.
In concept, Ubitium’s RISC-V processor sounds like an FPGA, which can be reprogrammed to change its functionality, sometimes also known as hardware emulation. But while FPGAs tend to come short of chips designed for specific uses in areas like performance, efficiency, and value, Ubititum says the Universal Processor will be “smaller, more energy-efficient, and significantly less costly.”
