RISC-V chips, shipments will reach 16 billion

The RISC-V open architecture has made significant progress since its launch in August 2014. More than 1 billion chips using the RISC-V architecture have been shipped, and it is estimated that 16 billion RISC-V architecture chips will be shipped by 2030.

At the recent RISC-V Forum, Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, said that it is predicted that the adoption rate of RISC-V will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 40% in the next few years. By 2030, 16 billion RISC-V architecture chips will be shipped. This is a significant increase from the approximately 1 billion units shipped to date.

Calista Redmond points to billions of cores around the world, and some analysts even point out that it would be difficult to find any new designs that don't include RISC-V. RISC-V is the most widespread technological revolution of this era.

Calista Redmond also emphasized that RISC-V architecture chips are currently widely used in microcontrollers. Qualcomm, a major mobile phone chip manufacturer, uses RISC-V for mobile system chip microcontrollers and is also expanding rapidly. Meta, Intel, Tenstorrent and Ventana are all developing RISC-V solutions for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Later, this technology will be extended to GPUs, such as the new GPUs jointly developed by Imagination and Venata.

Foreign media reported that US chip start-up Ventana Microsystems announced that it is cooperating with graphics technology manufacturer Imagination Technologies to establish a RISC-V CPU/GPU platform. The prototype will be displayed at the RISC-V Forum later. In order to make RISC-V architecture chips more competitive with Arm/x86 architecture products, RISC-V has actively established a strong software and hardware ecosystem. It is supported by more than 4,000 software development companies around the world, and there are a large number of software and hardware companies in the industry. The hardware designer development version strengthens the RISC-V architecture ecosystem and has greater development potential.

At the RISC-V North America Summit , global open standards organization RISC-V International celebrated the strong momentum of the RISC-V ecosystem in 2023. Today, RISC-V V has more than 4,000 members representing 70 countries around the world and has more than 75 technical working groups to promote the progress of RISC-V standards, software, tools, etc. This year alone, RISC-V has approved 12 specifications, with more on the way. Additionally, RISC-V has seen impressive adoption across industry verticals, with some of the world's largest companies launching new hardware and software solutions for RISC-V.

"The biggest takeaway from the RISC-V community this year is that we will see RISC-V everywhere. More and more industries and companies are turning to RISC-V to innovate faster and take advantage of a vibrant collaborative culture." RISC-V International CEO Calista Redmond said . “Our top priority going forward is to continue driving technology advancements and deepening community engagement while providing more value and resources to accelerate the RISC-V ecosystem.”

The RISC-V Technical Working Group has made significant progress in approving the specification to accelerate innovation. Some recent updates include the approval of the Vector Crypto ISA package and the Input-Output Memory Management Unit ( IOMMU ) specification. Profiles will help drive broad implementation across different tool chains and operating systems. Likewise, platforms will help speed up software development.

The RISC-V software ecosystem is growing rapidly. RISC-V has just launched RISC-V Labs, a new program designed to expand the RISC-V open source software ecosystem and accelerate developer efforts. The RISC-V Lab will bring together member companies across the ecosystem to provide developers with the resources they need to build and test software, from porting existing projects to the development of new components to drive the next wave of computing innovation.

Companies are building innovative RISC-V solutions in vertical markets such as aerospace, AI/ML, automotive, data center, embedded, HPC and security . There are tens of billions of RISC-V cores on the market, and the growth of RISC-V implementations will increase significantly in the coming years. Some of these solutions have appeared in the RISC-V Exchange, a catalog of RISC-V hardware and software solutions for different markets, which has grown by more than 40% since the beginning of 2023. Additionally, the RISC-V Development Board Program is helping to make development boards more accessible to the global RISC-V community to further stimulate innovation. Members who have contributed and provided boards as part of the program include Allwinner, Antmicro, Alibaba Cloud, BeagleBoard.com, Microchip, RIOS, SiFive and StarFive.

To help accelerate this industry momentum, RISC-V hosts special interest groups for Android, automotive, data center, HPC, academia, and security. There are many resources available to the RISC-V community to learn more about RISC-V's progress in these areas. For example, the recent webinar "Delivering the Future of Automotive Innovation with RISC-V" highlighted how RISC-V can simplify the development and deployment of automotive technology. To learn how Google and other community members are improving support for RISC-V in Android, visit here.

RISC-V continues to be focused on driving participation, talent and adoption of RISC-V globally. The RISC-V online learning program, designed to increase engineering expertise and career opportunities in RISC-V, has been expanded to include a certification program so hardware and software professionals can continue to develop their RISC-V skills. More than 26,600 registrants have attended these sessions since the program launched in 2021, with more than 8,400 registrants in 2023. In addition, this year RISC-V also launched a RISC-V technical conference to discuss various RISC-V technologies in depth.

RISC-V members are also active in other community-building events, including virtual RISC-V job fairs, bug hackathons , and RISC-V mentorship programs. In 2023, 27 people will serve as RISC-V ambassadors and RISC-V advocates to help the RISC-V community develop and participate. In addition, the Academic and Training Special Interest Group has been working to provide resources for universities to transition to RISC-V.

This year’s flagship RISC-V event is the North American RISC-V Summit, taking place in Santa Clara, California, November 6-8, 2023, bringing together the global RISC-V community to collaborate, network, and share technology breakthroughs and industry milestones . The event includes a wealth of technology and industry keynote speeches and conference events, complete with an exhibition hall where members showcase their latest innovations and products. The exhibition area also includes a RISC-V Developer Zone, showcasing a range of technologies for hardware and software developers to create next-generation computing applications.

Other events taking place in 2023 include RISC-V Europe Summit, RISC-V Tokyo Day and RISC-V Taipei Day. In addition, all tickets for the RISC-V China Summit were sold out, with more than 2,000 on-site registrations and thousands of people watching the live broadcast.

Here are some highlights from recent RISC-V announcements:

• Ashling announced that the RiscFree™ C/C++ SDK supports newly launched Synopsys ARC-V RISC-V ISA-based processors.

• BeagleBoard.org has launched the new BeagleV-Fire single-board computer, priced at $150.

• Codasip launched the 700 series of high-performance RISC-V cores, in addition to launching a commercial implementation of the advanced security mechanism CHERI.

• Microchip recently highlighted its expanded portfolio of RISC-V solutions.

• Qamcom has launched QERV, an extremely fast micro RISC-V CPU.

• Qualcomm is working with Google to launch RISC-V-based wearable device solutions that work with Google's Wear OS.

• SiFive debuted Performance P870 and Intelligence X390 RISC-V products for building AI and ML applications, and also announced that Sophgo has licensed multiple SiFive RISC-V high-performance processor cores.

• Synopsys has launched a new ARC-V™ processor IP based on the RISC-V ISA and joined RISC-V as a premium member.

• Ventana launches Veyron V2, a high-performance data center-grade RISC-V processor and platform, and collaborates with Imagination Technologies to provide high-performance RISC-V CPU and GPU solutions.

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