Re:Major Changes at RISC-V Designer SiFive
by brucehoult on Sunday October 29, 2023 @06:47PM
(#38063618)
SiFive announces a new core with significantly increased performance mostly every October(ish), and has been doing so every year(ish) since U74 (the core in the fastest currently shipping SoCs) succeeded U54 in October 2018.
They have never build a core comparable to the fastest current Arm, x86 cores because they haven't been moving up the performance curve for very long. Just five generations at this point.
October 2017: U54, almost A53 competitive despite being single-issue
October 2018: U74 (dual issue), A55 class
October 2019: U84 (OoO), A72 class
June 2021: P550, A76 class
December 2021: P650, A78 class
October 2023: P870, Cortex-X3 class
SiFive can't talk a lot about power consumption because that depends not only on the core design but the entire SoC, the process node, the corner of the process node, the physical design and many other things that are under the control of SiFive's customers, not SiFive.
They have never build a core comparable to the fastest current Arm, x86 cores because they haven't been moving up the performance curve for very long. Just five generations at this point.
October 2017: U54, almost A53 competitive despite being single-issue
October 2018: U74 (dual issue), A55 class
October 2019: U84 (OoO), A72 class
June 2021: P550, A76 class
December 2021: P650, A78 class
October 2023: P870, Cortex-X3 class
SiFive can't talk a lot about power consumption because that depends not only on the core design but the entire SoC, the process node, the corner of the process node, the physical design and many other things that are under the control of SiFive's customers, not SiFive.