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The RISC-V architecture looks set to become more prevalent in the high performance computing (HPC) sector, and could even become the dominant architecture, at least according to some technical experts in the field. Meanwhile, the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has just announced a project aimed at the development of HPC hardware and software based on RISC-V, with plans to deploy future exascale and post-exascale supercomputers based on this technology. RISC-V has been around for at least a decade as an open source instruction set architecture (ISA), while actual silicon implementations of the ISA have been coming...

In a recent guest editorial here on EE Times, legendary professor David Patterson wrote about busting the five myths around the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). At the recent RISC-V Summit organized by RISC-V International, the consortium that manages and promotes the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), its president, Calista Redmond, had a far more blunt message: RISC-V is inevitable. In fact, she said, RISC-V will eventually have the best CPUs, the best software running on them and the best ecosystem of any microprocessor core family. These are mighty strong words for a nascent ISA that is only about 10...

The official announcement of Windows 11 last month brought both excitement and confusion for enthusiasts. A brand-new Windows operating system only comes around every few years, but Microsoft’s hardware requirements left many scratching their heads. Chief among them is the instance on mandatory TPM 2.0 modules and AMD Ryzen 2000 or 7th generation Intel Core (and newer) processors. The processor cutoff was particularly puzzling, considering that AMD’s first-generation Ryzen 1000 processors came out in 2017, which is not that old in the grand scheme of things. For example, the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 1800X is still a perfectly acceptable processor for...

We just had some Major Announcements about ARM Development that changes Intels X86 future! Here's what we found out! (spoiler alert -- they have met the enemy and it is them)

RISC-V is a processor architecture and instruction set developed at UC Berkeley. It's attracted huge interest from everyone from startups to tech giants because it's entirely free and open source. Most current processors come with license agreements and are proprietary intellectual property, but anyone can manufacture a RISC-V chip, or design their own new processor. Big companies like Western Digital are already announcing a switch to RISC-V, and others like Google and Nvidia have partnered with them.There's a lot of ways this project could fail, but it also has the potential to make custom processor design available to a lot...

SiFive, a company established by researchers who invented the RISC-V instruction set architecture in the University of California Berkeley several years ago, has this week announced two platforms which could be used to design semi-custom SoCs based on RISC-V cores. SiFive is the world’s first and yet the only company developing chips featuring the RISC-V ISA and it already has initial customers interested in designing SoCs for machine learning, storage, embedded, IoT and wearable applications. SiFive: World’s First Developer of Commercial RISC-V Chips RISC-V is an open-source microprocessor architecture developed by researchers in the Computer Science Division at UC Berkeley and...

IBM today unveiled a breakthrough in semiconductor design and process with the development of the world's first chip announced with 2 nanometer (nm) nanosheet technology. Semiconductors play critical roles in everything from computing, to appliances, to communication devices, transportation systems, and critical infrastructure.Demand for increased chip performance and energy efficiency continues to rise, especially in the era of hybrid cloud, AI, and the Internet of Things. IBM's new 2 nm chip technology helps advance the state-of-the-art in the semiconductor industry, addressing this growing demand. It is projected to achieve 45 percent higher performance, or 75 percent lower energy use, than...