As per a recent announcement, the American semiconductor manufacturer Intel has established a new $1 billion investment fund in support of semiconductor companies working on open-source RISC-V processors as well as other chip innovations and packaged technologies.
As part of the announcement the company, on Monday, also became a premier member of RISC-V International, a non-profit organization that looks after the design and direction of the open-source instruction set architecture (ISA) as well as its extensions.
Intel will focus on laying a foundation for organizations that need help with the design and authentication of advanced chip and modular products. It’ll make use of multiple instruction set architectures (ISA), including Intel’s own x86, Arm, and RISC-V. The focus of the Innovation Fund is also to advance the concept of 3D chip design for the solid integration of different types of processor cores.
As part of the new scheme, Intel will partner with Andes Technology, Esperanto Technology, SiFive, and Ventana MicroSystems to offer a range of validated RISC-V IP cores.
The company further plans to offer three types of RISC-V products: partner products built on IFS technologies, RISC-V cores licensed as differentiated IP, and chipset building blocks based on RISC-V. According to the company’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger:
Foundry customers are rapidly embracing a modular design approach to differentiate their products and accelerate time to market
Intel’s billion-dollar investment is rather impressive and holds the potential of reshaping the industry’s landscape for good. Even the timing is perfect, as the potential sale of Arm to NVIDIA, which has recently been shelved, spurred many developers to search for an alternative to Arm technology, and RISC-V is just the replacement.
The chip giant recently invested $20 billion to open up fabs near Columbus, Ohio. It is also expanding manufacturing operations in Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Ireland. The company has identified manufacturing as a priority and is hoping the investments will pull more chip customers to use its factories.
