RISC-V tapped to bolster EU semiconductor concerns with new accelerator project

RISC-V is increasingly touted as the biggest alternative to ARM in the future, especially as demand for new chips for automotive and low-power IoT-like use-cases - mostly because the latter is closed-source, whereas the former is not.

Accordingly, semiconductor-design giants such as Qualcomm Technologies hail RISC-V as a driver of industrial R&D, making the ability to "develop cutting-edge, customized hardware" available to any OEM, regardless of its size and resources. This is probably why it has announced the intention to become a stakeholder in what might be the equivalent of ARM's corporate entity for RISC-V - just without the IP lockdown.

It will apparently take the form of a "company aimed at advancing the adoption of RISC-V globally by enabling next-generation hardware development". It will be based in Germany, from where it will apparently become a definitive source of polished, OEM-ready "products" based on the ISA, not to mention pre-packaged reference architectures and solutions.

Then again, this company's potential place in the "EU semiconductor ecosystem" and its role in the production of next-gen SoCs for the cars, wireless technology and perhaps even mobile devices of the future is still pending regulatory approval (and, apparently, a choice of name at present). Nevertheless, it already has some high-profile investors: Infineon Technologies AG; Nordic Semiconductor; NXP Semiconductors and Robert Bosch GmbH, as well as Qualcomm itself.

Buy a SwitchBot Smart Lock on Amazon