December is right here, and with it comes a number of technical summits forward of the vacation break. Essentially the most notable of which this week is the annual RISC-V summit, which is being placed on by the Linux Basis and sees the quite a few (and ever rising) events concerned within the open supply ISA collect to speak in regards to the newest merchandise and developments within the RISC-V ecosystem. The summit at all times tends to function some new product bulletins, and this 12 months is not any completely different, as Creativeness Applied sciences is on the present to offer particulars on their first RISC-V CPU cores, together with asserting their intentions to develop a full suite of CPU cores over the following few years.
The corporate, at present finest identified for his or her PowerVR GPU lineup, has been dipping their toes into the RISC-V ecosystem for the final couple of years with initiatives like RVfpga. Extra lately, this previous summer season the corporate revealed in an earnings name that they’d be designing RISC-V CPU cores, with extra particulars to return. Now on the RISC-V summit they’re offering these particulars and extra, with the formal announcement of their Catapult household of RISC-V cores, in addition to outlining a heterogeneous computing-centric roadmap for future improvement.
Ranging from the highest, the Catapult household is Creativeness’s overarching title for an entire household of RISC-V CPU cores, the primary of that are launching right now. Creativeness has (and is) designing a number of microarchitectures with a view to cowl a broad vary of efficiency/energy/space (PPA) wants, and the Catapult household is slated to embody every little thing from microcontroller-grade processors to high-performance software processors. All informed, Creativeness’s plans for the absolutely fleshed out Catapult household look quite a bit like Arm’s Cortex household, with Creativeness making ready CPU core designs for microcontrollers (Cortex-M), real-time CPUs (Cortex-R), excessive efficiency software processors (Cortex-A), and functionally secure CPUs (Cortex-AE). Arm stays the participant to beat on this area, so having an analogous product construction ought to assist Creativeness clean the transition for any shoppers that decide to disembark for Catapult.
At current, Creativeness has completed their first CPU core design, which is a straightforward, in-order core for 32-bit and 64-bit techniques. The in-order Catapult core is getting used for microcontrollers in addition to real-time CPUs, and in line with the corporate, Catapult microcontrollers are already transport in silicon as a part of automotive merchandise. In the meantime the real-time core is out there to prospects as effectively, although it’s not but in any transport silicon.
The present in-order core design helps as much as 8 cores in a single cluster. The corporate didn’t quote any efficiency figures, although keep in mind it is a easy processor meant for microcontrollers and different very low energy gadgets. In the meantime, the core is out there with ECC throughout each its L1 and TCM caches, in addition to assist for a few of RISC-V’s brand-new extensions, such because the Vector computing extension, and doubtlessly different extensions ought to prospects ask for them.
Following the present in-order core, Creativeness has primarily three extra core designs on their rapid roadmap. For 2022 the corporate is planning to launch an enhanced model of the in-order core as an software processor-grade design, full with assist for “wealthy” OSes like Linux. And in 2023 that will probably be adopted by one other, even larger performing in-order core for the real-time and software processor markets. Lastly, the corporate can also be creating a way more complicated out-of-order RISC-V core design as effectively, which is anticipated within the 2023-2024 timeframe. The out-of-order Catapult would primarily be their first tackle delivering a high-performance RISC-V software processor, and like we at present see with high-performance cores the Arm area, has the potential to turn out to be essentially the most seen member of the Catapult household.
Farther out nonetheless are the corporate’s plans for “subsequent era heterogeneous compute” designs. These can be CPU designs that transcend present heterogeneous choices – particularly, simply inserting CPU, GPU, and NPU blocks inside a single SoC – by extra deeply combining these applied sciences. At this level Creativeness isn’t saying way more, however they’re making it clear that they aren’t simply going to cease with a quick CPU core.
General, these are all clear room designs for Creativeness. Whereas the corporate has lengthy since bought off its Meta and MIPS CPU divisions, it nonetheless retains loads of the engineering expertise from these efforts – together with possession of or entry to numerous patents from the world. So though they aren’t reusing something straight from earlier designs, they’re hoping to leverage their earlier expertise to construct higher IP sooner.
In fact, CPU cores are only one a part of what it’ll take to reach the IP area; in addition to incumbent Arm, there are additionally a number of different gamers within the RISC-V area, corresponding to SiFive, who’re all vying for a lot of the identical market. So Creativeness must each differentiate themselves from the competitors, and supply some sort of market edge to prospects.
To that finish, Creativeness goes to be closely selling the chances for heterogenous computing designs with their IP. In comparison with among the different RISC-V CPU core distributors, Creativeness already has well-established GPU and NPU IP, so prospects seeking to put collectively one thing greater than only a straight CPU will be capable to faucet into Creativeness’s bigger library of IP. This does put the corporate extra in direct competitors with Arm (who already has all of this stuff as effectively), however then that very a lot appears to be Creativeness’s objective right here.
In any other case, Creativeness believes that their different huge benefit on this area is the corporate’s historical past and placement. As beforehand talked about, Creativeness holds entry to a big variety of patents; so for shoppers who need to keep away from additional patent licensing, they’ll reap the benefits of the truth that Creativeness’s IP already comes indemnified in opposition to these patents. In the meantime for chip designers who’re based mostly exterior of the US and are weary of geopolitical points affecting ongoing entry to IP, Creativeness is of course positioned in its place there since they aren’t based mostly within the US both – and thus entry to their IP can’t be minimize off by the US.
Wrapping issues up, with the launch of their Catapult household of RISC-V CPU IP, creativeness is laying out a reasonably formidable plan for the corporate for the following few years. By leveraging each their earlier expertise constructing CPUs in addition to their present complementary IP like GPUs and NPUs, Creativeness has their sights set on changing into a serious participant within the RISC-V IP area – and notably in terms of heterogeneous compute. In the end quite a bit might want to go proper for the corporate earlier than they’ll get there, but when they’ll succeed, then with their various assortment of IP they’d be in a relatively distinctive place amongst RISC-V distributors.