Intel Reportedly Interested in Acquiring RISC-V Firm SiFive | Hacker News Reader

Intel Reportedly Interested in Acquiring RISC-V Firm SiFive

phoronix.com

22 pointsdmoreno8 comments

Well, there goes the neighborhood. Seriously, half of the attractiveness of RISC-V to both buyers and developers of new hardware is that it is an architecture that is NOT controlled by the likes of Intel!

I guess both Intel and AMD are now wishing they hadn't divested themselves of their now incredibly valuable embedded processor IP 15-20 years ago, when both had the dinosaur attitude that only x86 mattered, and that nothing could ever displace it. (Classical reference to Ted Nelson's warning to the mainframe (and even minicomputer) makers of the 1970s: "Wake up dinosaurs, the mammals are eating your eggs!")

(Historical capsule: Intel acquired StrongARM from DEC (rebranded as Xscale), and sold it off to basically create the modern Marvell. AMD sold off its Alchemy (MIPS) processors to a former exec, and the tech eventually found its way to Broadcomm. AMD also finally killed off its long-neglected Geode embedded 32-bit x86 (originally acquired from National/Cyrix) in 2019.)

Intel can design and make RISC-V chips without buying SiFive. And buying SiFive doesn't give them any control over the ISA at all.

Considering that Intel had been an ARM licencee in the past, it would appear that they are attempting to leapfrog the ARM RISC space by going to RISC-V.

There are many who see RISC-V as being an attractive alternative to ARM. Especially when you consider the opportunities to extend the instruction set to support niche application domains.

I imagine that the real reason is not the attractiveness of the ISA, but the commercial danger of NVidia gaining control over Arm IP.

That would make much more sense if the buyer was qualcomm.

Who says that Qualcomm are not also trying to do something in the RISCV space?

Based on LinkedIn searches, Qualcomm disbanded their general-purpose silicon IP division in Raleigh/Durham before the pandemic. So the question is, have they acquihired a team elsewhere to replace them, perhaps with more RISC-V knowledge? If not, you can infer they probably aren't seriously competing in this space.

LinkedIn is always interesting, I agree.

For example, what is cloud guy like Larry Wikelius doing at a wireless processor company like Qualcomm?

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