It’s a work in progress, but Esperanto Technologies is looking to use RISC-V technology in artificial-intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) applications . These days, ML, which is a branch of AI, means deep neural networks (DNNs) . That, in turn, requires high-performance computing tailored for processing these types of networks.

Esperanto is developing the ET-Maxion and ET-Minion RISC-V processors to address this growing niche, which up to now has been dominated by GPGPUs and custom hardware designs . Also part of the mix is the ET-Graphics core that targets graphics solutions.

It’s a work in progress, but Esperanto Technologies is looking to use RISC-V technology in artificial-intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) applications . These days, ML, which is a branch of AI, means deep neural networks (DNNs) . That, in turn, requires high-performance computing tailored for processing these types of networks.

Esperanto is developing the ET-Maxion and ET-Minion RISC-V processors to address this growing niche, which up to now has been dominated by GPGPUs and custom hardware designs . Also part of the mix is the ET-Graphics core that targets graphics solutions.

The company’s goal is to have the best teraFLOPS per watt using RISC-V for ML. It will do so using RISC-V Domain Specific Extensions (DSEs), including a RISC-V Vector ISA, Tensor instructions, and additional hardware acceleration. One advantage of RISC-V is that it doesn’t use the entire instruction space, making DSEs possible. Of course, one implementation with a DSE may differ from another, so applications would not necessarily be portable unless they were limited to the common RISC-V subset.

Esperanto is aiming for TSMC 7-nm silicon . The ET-Maxion core is initially based on the open-source, Berkeley Out-of-Order (BOOM) RISC-V processor architecture, although Esperanto plans on significant extensions. The company will continue to manage and support the open-source BOOM repository, but the advanced version will be part of the licensable technology.

The ET-Maxion starts with the 64-bit RISC-V