SiFive has launched a RISC-V data center processor for AI workloads.

Dubbed the SiFive Performance P870-D, it offers high compute density and scalability for data centers, vehicles, and embedded systems.

Sampling is currently available to select customers, with production expected by the end of 2024.

In a post announcing the offering, SiFive said the processor builds “on the success of the P870” and is aligned with the platform and profile standards defined by RISC-V International.

The P870-D is scalable to 256 cores in heterogeneous SoCs and chiplet configurations and supports the RISC-V Sv57 extension to enable 57-bit virtual address space for increased memory. SiFive said that it also offers an improved performance per watt, in addition to lowering the total cost of ownership for AI model training.

The P870-D also supports the open AMBA CHI protocol, allowing customers to have greater flexibility over the number of clusters they deploy. The CHI protocol classifies system components by node type and facilitates communication between nodes, improving performance and scalability for mobile, networking, and data center applications.

“The new P870-D enhances our proven Performance architecture to bring new levels of performance, flexibility, and scalability,” said John Ronco, SiFive SVP of product.

“The full solution offering from SiFive - including software, IOMMU, interrupt controller, and other uncore blocks - combined with our intelligence processors for dedicated AI compute makes it easy for our customers to achieve the most effective performance/watt/dollar metrics on AI and data center workloads”

Founded in California in 2015, SiFive is a fabless chip company designing RISC-V-based chips. It was one of the first companies to produce RISC-V processors.

RISC-V is an open standard instruction set (ISA) architecture based on established RISC (reduced instruction set computing) principles, which is provided under open source licenses that do not require fees.