Flex Logix to Provide Embedded FPGA IP to 'DesignShare' for SiFive Freedom Platform

RISC-V leader adds flexible embedded, reconfigurable FPGA capabilities to speed time-tomarket and improve performance of custom open source-based silicon

SAN MATEO AND MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Oct. 31, 2017 – SiFive, the first fabless provider of customized, open-source-enabled semiconductors, and Flex Logix™, a leader in embedded FPGA IP and software, today announced they will partner to make Flex Logix EFLX® embedded FPGA available for the SiFive Freedom Platform as part of the DesignShare program. The availability of Flex Logix IP through DesignShare eases time to market and removes traditional barriers to entry that have blocked smaller companies from developing custom silicon.

“The addition of Flex Logix’s best-in-class embedded FPGA platform to the DesignShare ecosystem provides engineers with a new and better way to bring SoCs to market,” said Naveed Sherwani, CEO of SiFive. “The adoption of the RISC-V architecture continues to experience significant growth, and the addition of embedded FPGA technologies through DesignShare will make it easier and more flexible for designers to employ RISC-V in their future designs across a wide range of implementations, from embedded devices to the data center.”

The Freedom Platform gives any company, inventor or maker the ability to harness the power of custom silicon and incorporate world-class IP into their products. Unlike the traditional ASIC model, which greatly restricts the number of viable designs by requiring a significant upfront investment for IP and development, the SiFive Freedom Platform and its DesignShare partners reduce and defer this investment by providing low- or no-cost IP during the prototyping phase. By reducing the investment cost and streamlining the IP acquisition process, the DesignShare program aims to significantly increase the number of new silicon designs starts.

SiFive will collaborate with Flex Logix to make its EFLX® embedded FPGA available for the SiFive Freedom Platform of SoCs at 28nm and 180 nm, with several embedded FPGA array size options available for each node. The EFLX embedded FPGA also will be integrated into a future tape-out of the SiFive U500 base platform for customer evaluation using SiFive evaluation boards and software. Flex Logix embedded FPGA for the SiFive Freedom Platform can directly connect up to 64 GPIO while acting as a reconfigurable accelerator for specific tasks, increasing battery life, improving programmable serial I/O functions and offloading low-level, repetitive processing from the CPU.

“There is a critical need in the chip industry to provide a faster, cheaper way for innovative companies to rapidly prototype new, advanced chip architectures,” said Geoff Tate, CEO of Flex Logix. “Through DesignShare, SiFive and Flex Logix can give customers a highly programmable, flexible chip design for both microcontroller SoCs and multicore process SoCs. The RISC-V architecture provides excellent performance, and – when combined with embedded FPGA functionality, can provide higher performance in a reconfigurable way.”

SiFive was founded by the inventors of RISC-V – Andrew Waterman, Yunsup Lee and Krste Asanovic – with a mission to democratize access to custom silicon. In its first six months of availability, more than 1,000 HiFive1 software development boards have been purchased and delivered to developers in over 40 countries. Additionally, the company has engaged with multiple customers across its IP and SoC products, started shipping the industry’s first RISC-V SoC in November 2016 and announced the availability of its RISC-V Core IP in September. SiFive’s innovative “study, evaluate, buy” licensing model dramatically simplifies the IP licensing process, and removes traditional road blocks that have limited access to customized, leading edge silicon.

About SiFive

SiFive is the first fabless provider of customized semiconductors based on the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture. Founded by RISC-V inventors Yunsup Lee, Andrew Waterman and Krste Asanovic, SiFive democratizes access to custom silicon by helping system designers reduce time-to-market and realize cost savings with customized RISC-V based semiconductors. SiFive is located in Silicon Valley and has venture backing from Sutter Hill Ventures, Spark Capital and Osage University Partners. For more information, visit www.sifive.com.

About Flex Logix

Flex Logix, founded in March 2014, provides solutions for reconfigurable RTL in chip and system designs using embedded FPGA IP cores and software. The company's technology platform delivers significant customer benefits by dramatically reducing design and manufacturing risks, accelerating technology roadmaps, and bringing greater flexibility to customers’ hardware. Flex Logix has secured approximately $13 million of venture backed capital, is headquartered in Mountain View, California and has sales rep offices in China, Europe, Israel, Japan, Taiwan and Texas. More information can be obtained at http://www.flex-logix.com.