SiFive has raised $61m in a Series E funding round led by existing investors including Intel, Qualcomm and SK Hynix, plus a new investor Prosperity7 Ventures – brings the total investment in SiFive to >$185m since 2015.

SiFive-logo

“Global demand for storage and memory in the data centre is increasing as AI-powered business intelligence and data processing growth continues”, said SK hynix v-p of strategy Youjong Kang. “SiFive is well-positioned to grow with opportunities created from data centre, enterprise, storage and networking requirements for workload-focused processor IP.”

SiFive develops a range of processor cores based around the RISC-V architecture, as well as accelerators, and SoC IP – creating processor microarchitecture for workload-specific silicon.

Something that has attracted users to RISC-V, particularly AI users,  is that custom instruction are allowed – SiFive supports this with its ‘Custom Instruction Extensions’ (SCIE). SiFive’s heterogeneous architecture also allows the integration of mixed processor core designs in a coherent cluster.

Recently the company announced the SiFive 20G1 update for SiFive Core IP that included enhancements in performance, power, area and features – with pre-integrated ‘Shield’ for integrated circuity security, and ‘Insight’ trace and debug capabilities.

“With this new investment, SiFive will help semiconductor companies bring to market products for aerospace, automotive, artificial intelligence, data centre, mobile, networking and storage applications,” according to SiFive.

Investors were led by SK hynix, and included Prosperity7 Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Western Digital Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Intel Capital, Osage University Partners and Spark Capital.