In related news, Allen Wu, former CEO of Arm China, is rumored to have founded a new company, Zhongzhi Chip, which is attracting talent from Arm and forming alliances with several global RISC-V chip developers. The company's operational focus is unclear, with speculation around whether it will engage in its own R&D initiatives or represent Tenstorrent in China as its agent, developing HPC CPUs and AI processors based on the RISC-V ISA.
Key takeaways:
- Chip startup Rivos has raised $250 million in a funding round to manufacture its first server chip geared for artificial intelligence, after settling a lawsuit with Apple earlier this year.
- Rivos plans to design chips based on the RISC-V architecture, an open source alternative to architectures made by Arm, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices, which will save them from paying license fees.
- Lip-Bu Tan, founding managing partner at Walden Catalyst, one of Rivos' investors, plans to build a software-defined hardware ecosystem for RISC-V, similar to what CUDA did with Nvidia.
- Former chief executive of Arm China, Allen Wu, is rumored to have founded a new company, Zhongzhi Chip, which is attracting talent from Arm and is speculated to be developing chips based on RISC-V.