SiFive announces RISC-V P650 16-core processor launching in mid-2022

SiFive introduced its first PC-compatible RISC-V processor earlier this year and the Californian company is now committing to a yearly cadence as it just announced the next generation Performance P650 model scheduled to release in mid-2022. This upcoming processor is expected to be the fastest licensable RISC-V processor IP core optimized for performance-demanding application processor markets from data center to edge, automotive, compute, mobile etc.

Regarding the yearly cadence, SiFive co-founder and CTO Dr. Yunsup Lee stated that the “Performance P650 processor IP represents our commitment towards relentless execution, delivering significant performance improvements in record time. This announcement is the next step towards our long-term vision of bringing RISC-V processors to all performance-hungry applications."

The press release is not too specific as far as specs go, but it does mention that the upcoming 64-bit P650 cores are expanding the processor instruction-issue width to deliver a 40% performance increase per clock cycle. Also, the updated architecture specs lead to improved maximum clock frequency, achieving an overall 50% performance gain over the P550 model. SiFive estimates that the P650 SPECInt2006/GHz score will be higher than 11, whereas a single P550 core running at 2.4 GHz scores 8.65 and outperforms an ARM Cortex-A75 core by 31%. Moreover, the P650 can scale to integrate 16 cores supporting the new RISC-V Hypervisor extension for virtualization.

Although general availability for the P650 is scheduled for mid-2021, an architecture preview will be offered to lead customers in Q1 2022. Dr. Lee will provide additional details in his RISC-V Summit 2021 keynote from next week.

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