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A comment on SiFive Tapes Out First 5nm TSMC 32-bit RISC-V Chip with 7.2 Gbps HBM3. Parent comment

Re:SiFive Tapes Out First 5nm TSMC 32-bit RISC-V Chip with 7... by lizknope on Friday April 16, 2021 @10:24AM (#26834260)
They pay money just like any other customer of TSMC. SiFive has a lot of buzz in the industry. I wouldn't be surprised that TSMC wanted to work with them.

But there are other intermediary companies that help startups group multiple chips from multiple companies together into a single mask. This is called a "shuttle" and allows the companies to split the costs of the masks (I've heard up to $30 million for 5nm)

SiFive is probably building about 2,000 of these chips for development boards. They aren't trying to order a hundred million like Nvidia.

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Re:SiFive Tapes Out First 5nm TSMC 32-bit RISC-V Chip with 7... by klelatti on Friday April 16, 2021 @03:12PM (#26837895)
Thanks that's very interesting. No intention in any way to belittle SiFive - just puzzled as to how they managed to get onto this process when it's obviously so much in demand. Good for them!
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Re:SiFive Tapes Out First 5nm TSMC 32-bit RISC-V Chip with 7... by monocasa on Friday April 16, 2021 @06:03PM (#26839551)
Adding to this, it's in TSMC's interest to have cheaper licenses for high quality processor cores for it's customers, and therefore have strategic reasons to prioritize small runs of RISC-V chips right now.

Pretty classic "commoditize your complement".

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Re:SiFive Tapes Out First 5nm TSMC 32-bit RISC-V Chip with 7... by gautamcgoel on Friday April 16, 2021 @07:53PM (#26840331)
Can you list some of these shuttle companies? What are the most popular/reputable ones?
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Re:SiFive Tapes Out First 5nm TSMC 32-bit RISC-V Chip with 7... by lizknope on Saturday April 17, 2021 @07:16AM (#26843373)
When I have worked at large companies we handled everything ourselves and dealt directly with the fabs.

When I worked at startups and smaller companies we have interacted with:

Global Unichip Corporation (I believe TSMC owns part of the company)

https://www.guc-asic.com/en-global

Open Silicon (they literally merged with SiFive to become OpenFive and made this chip in the article)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-Silicon

Uniquify

https://www.uniquify.com/

Socionext

https://www.socionext.com/en/

There are others but these are the 4 that I have dealt with.

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