Jim Keller's new company chooses SiFive as its partner

Tenstorrent, a company focused on developing AI heterogeneous processors led by former AMD engineers Ljubisa Bajic and Jim Keller, recently announced that it has licensed a general-purpose CPU design developed by SiFive based on the RISC-V architecture. Licensing general-purpose cores and IP will accelerate the time to market for Tenstorrent products.

Tenstorrent has developed a high-performance AI training and inference system-on-chip architecture based on its own Tensix processor core optimized for machine learning. To run traditional workloads, Tenstorrent's SoC will use SiFive's new general-purpose X280, a 64-bit RISC-V-based core with a fully integrated 512-bit wide RISC-V vector extension (RVV). SiFive is expected to reveal details of its vector processing solution at the Linley Spring Processor Conference later this week.

Along with SiFive’s Intelligence X280 IP, Tenstorrent will also gain access to the RISC-V software stack, which should further accelerate the chip’s time to market.

“SiFive Intelligence is a new initiative focused on providing cutting-edge software and hardware technologies to those looking to innovate in the AI ​​market,” said Chris Lattner, president of engineering and products at SiFive. “Tenstorrent is an ideal partner for SiFive’s new products targeting machine learning applications, with its team of industry leaders and impressive track record of tapeout success.”

Tenstorrent designers have not yet disclosed all the specifications of their upcoming processors, but it is now clear that the company wants its SoC architecture to be capable of general-purpose processing, vector processing (for AI inference and high-performance computing), and machine learning. Ultimately, Tenstorrent's architecture could be used in a variety of applications, including the next generation of supercomputers that require AI and HPC capabilities.

Ljubisa Bajic and Jim Keller worked at AMD for decades on x86-based designs. Keller also worked on multiple Arm-based designs during his time at Apple. The fact that Tenstorrent chose to use the RISC-V CPU design developed by SiFive is noteworthy in itself and a testament to the new architecture.

“The Tenstorrent architecture addresses the growing need for data-as-code in Software 2.0,” Keller said in the press release. “We are excited to partner with SiFive because of their ability to deliver CPUs and software for the modern RISC-V ecosystem.”