Some may doubt RISC-V will ever challenge Arm at least in some markets, but the industry is investing in solutions based on the royalty-free open source ISA, with this week SiFive securing $65.4 Million from various investors including Qualcomm Ventures LLC, and the announcement of the launch of the OpenHW Group, a new not-for-profit global organization aims to boost the adoption of open-source processors currently backed by 13 companies, and aiming to reach 25 sponsors by year’s end.

SiFive gets more interest from investors

Here’s the main part of the announcement of SiFive’s new series D funding:

SiFive, Inc., the leading provider of commercial RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions, today announced it raised $65.4 million in a Series D round led by existing investors Sutter Hill Ventures, Chengwei Capital, Spark Capital, Osage University Partners and Huami, alongside new investor Qualcomm Ventures LLC. This Series D round brings the total investment to date in SiFive to more than $125 million.

The reasons for the funding is to “further enable and accelerate SiFive’s global expansion and technology development” with the company now employing more than 400 employees across 15 locations globally.

OpenHW Group launch and Core-V open source cores announcement

The OpenHW Group has just been created, with the aim of “providing a platform for collaboration, creating a focal point for ecosystem development, and offering open-source IP for processor cores”.

The non-profit organization is currently comprised of the following sponsors: Alibaba, Bluespec, CMC Microsystems, Embecosm, ETH Zurich University, GreenWaves, Imperas, Metrics, Mythic, NXP, Onespin, Silicon Labs and Thales, and also partners with the Eclipse Foundation for open-source software collaboration and innovation.

The group did not come empty handed as they also introduced the CORE-V family of cores, which “supports system-on-chip (SoC) hardware and software designers with a quality and manufacturability assurance when adopting RISC-V processor core IP”. CORE-V cores are described as follows:

CORE-V is a series of RISC-V based open-source cores with associated processor subsystem IP, tools and software for electronic system designers. The CORE-V family provides quality core IP in line with industry best practices in both silicon and FPGA optimized implementations. These cores can be used to facilitate rapid design innovation and ensure effective manufacturability of production SoCs.

At this stage, I did not find any downloadable resources however, and the product page points to the mailing list instead.