USilicon Technology's WH (Weihe) series RISC-V micro-architecture products were unveiled at ELEXCON

Since the outbreak of the Sino-US trade war in 2018, "autonomy and controllability" has become a pain point that the semiconductor industry has been working hard to overcome from top to bottom.

In terms of chip architecture, because the BSD open source protocol gives users great freedom, allowing users to modify and republish open source code, and also allowing the development and release of commercial software based on open source code, RISC-V is seen as a new opportunity in China's integrated circuit field. Microarchitecture circuits developed based on this architecture do not need to be reported to RISC-V holders, and its use will not be restricted by other laws.

It is precisely because RISC-V chose the BSD open source protocol, which is very friendly to commercial companies, and RISC-V has the advantages of being streamlined and flexible that many commercial companies have paid attention to RISC-V.

On September 11, the ELEXCON Shenzhen International Electronics Exhibition and 5G Global Conference (China Station) officially opened at the Shenzhen International Convention and Exhibition Center (Bao'an New Hall).

Among them, Shenzhen USi Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "USi Technology"), which focuses on the research and development of processor microarchitecture based on the RISC-V open source instruction set, appeared at the ELEXCON exhibition (booth number: 9R33-06).

At this exhibition, USilicon Technology mainly exhibited its WH (Weihe) series processor microarchitecture products, including WH32 LITE, WH32, WH64, and WH66.

Benchmarking ARM-Cortex A series products

Jiwei.com learned that the WH (Weihe) series micro-architecture products of Yousi Technology are mainly based on the collaborative development of software and hardware of the Linux minimum system (compatible with parallel RTOS), focusing on the customized development of Dhrystone2.0~3.0DMIPS/MHz processor micro-architecture with a working frequency of more than 1GHz computing power, benchmarked against ARM Cortex-A7 and A53, to provide domestic substitution and differentiated supplementation for the application market.

At present, the application markets of its WH (Weihe) micro-architecture series products mainly include smart hardware (pan-AIoT application type), data acceleration, industrial control, aerospace, automotive electronics and other specific fields. Smart hardware covers a wide range, such as camera chips, network routing, edge gateway chips, smart voice chips, service robot chips, etc.

Wang Luye, co-founder and CEO of USi Technology, said that in the field of vertical applications, USi Technology has cooperated with Allwinner Technology, and the WH (Weihe) microarchitecture has been applied to the development of specific application chips, and commercial mass production iterations have been carried out since 2019.

In addition, while developing microarchitecture and chip joint mass production based on the Weihe series, USilicon Technology is also actively working with software companies, open source community geek developers, and wafer fabs to build an ecosystem of semi-universal quasi-products.

It is understood that it is currently carrying out the development and planning of three series and six MPU chip designs. It will use a small-scale production method once a quarter to supply ultra-cost-effective chips and development boards to enable community open source and healthy ecological development, provide ecological support to directly authorized customers, and iterate the main line of the Weihe microarchitecture.

In the field of vertical applications, based on the iteration of the WH (Weihe) series, higher-performance products will be launched, that is, micro-architectures with computing power levels comparable to ARM Cortex-A72, A78 or A55.

In addition, the USi Technology LDJ (Le Du Juan) series processor micro-architecture is benchmarked against the ARM Cortex-M series products, providing IoT microcontroller MCU-level computing power and integrating specific DSP extension instructions to meet the needs of tightly coupled IP subsystems including acoustic processing, biometrics, and security algorithms. Currently, it has cooperated with Bluetooth chip manufacturer Fu Rui Kun to jointly create a BLE Bluetooth chip based on the USi Technology LDJ (Le Du Juan) RISC-V micro-architecture.

"Based on the above products, the corresponding application market is very broad." Wang Luye introduced that, for example, in high-computing power products, we now have processors such as Cortex-A55 with 6 cores and above combined with AI-related applications, plus AI deep learning engines, and embedded eFPGA application types, which will have product applications in industrial control, medical care, and automation.

In 2020, USi Technology's primary task is to continue silicon verification and optimization in specific system functions, such as improving data transfer efficiency, and to further improve and surpass product maturity, especially integrity and stability. By combining agile design with traditional design methodology innovation, USi Technology will work together with industry chain partners to create a differentiated product development path.

WH32 processor microarchitecture

Collaborative innovation, win-win cooperation

For UniSilicon, which was established only two years ago, it is extremely difficult to compete with international giants and domestic enterprises for the market. Wang Luye has his own considerations for this.

USi first carried out the practice of integrated collaborative development of education, industry, academia and research in Xi'an in early 2017. The cooperative projects were to convert ARC and PowerPC processor microarchitectures into RISC-V, and the project delivery was very successful.

The Xi'an project has accumulated rich practical experience for it, and behind the success of the project, there is also the support of a strong technical team and a good service attitude.

It is understood that USi Technology has a strong team to support it from instruction set competition analysis and application definition, computer architecture and specific algorithm research, microarchitecture design and verification, compiler software and tool chain, to chip-level architecture design implementation and solution integration development, and then to physical process and device collaborative development.

"We have a very important slogan internally, which is to be a 'reassuring partner'." Wang Luye introduced that "reassuring" is an art and an attitude. It is an education and industrial practice that integrates science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. Ultimately, it all comes down to how to achieve mutual success better and faster when dealing with people, people and things, and people and themselves.

The accumulation of early project experience has laid a good foundation for its future market conquest. Adhering to the principle of "a reassuring partner", USi Technology will continue to "crawl forward" in the market and work together with its partners for win-win results.

On the one hand, it will strengthen the training and practical application of the existing talent structure in terms of technology, and at the same time will cooperate more widely with the industry, including enterprises and academia in Europe, the United States and China.

For example, at the technical level, in specific architectures and applications, YouSi combines with other technology sources, such as domestic GPUs and domestic wafer fabs, to develop sub-threshold low-power standard cell libraries based on specific processes.

On the other hand, in the market, we will focus on collaborative innovation and win-win cooperation with specific industrial clusters or specific technical points and partners in the industrial chain.