Chip developer Rivos Inc. is reportedly in talks to raise between $400 million and $500 million from investors.
The Information on Thursday cited sources as saying that the round could value the startup at more than $2 billion. The report comes 18 months after Rivos’ last raise, which saw it receive more than $250 million from Intel Ventures and other institutional backers.
Santa Clara, California-based Rivos is reportedly developing a chip optimized for artificial intelligence inference. Last year, Bloomberg reported that the company was planning to make the processor using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s three-nanometer node. The node is available in several versions, including an edition called N3P that is specifically optimized for data center chips.
The Information reported that Rivos hopes to launch its chip as early as 2026. The company’s website, in turn, states that the chip will include a graphics processing unit and multiple central processing units. That suggests the module will compete with Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin chip, which is also set to launch next year and features a similar multi-processor design.
Vera Rubin’s CPU is based on Arm Holdings plc’s popular instruction set architecture. Rivos, in contrast, is using the competing RISC-V architecture. The latter technology is open source, which enables users to avoid the licensing fees that Arm charges for its blueprints.
The CPUs in Rivos’ chip will use a new RISC-V component called RVA23 Profile that the company helped develop. The technology expands RISC-V’s support for vector extensions. Those are low-level computing operations that enable a CPU to more efficiently run AI models, data analytics software and certain other workloads.
Rivos says that its chip’s CPUs and GPU will be supported by “terabytes of memory.” The processor’s memory pool includes not only DRAM but also HBM, a faster variety of RAM that is widely used in AI accelerators. RAM speed heavily influences the performance of AI models because they move data to and from memory more often than other workloads.
The company plans to ship its silicon as part of servers that will each contain multiple chips. On the software side, the company is working with Canonical Ltd. to develop a version of Ubuntu optimized for its hardware. Rivos will recompile some software components to boost their performance.
According to The Information, the company is working on a tool that can turn CUDA-based AI models into a form compatible with its chips. CUDA is a set of technologies that developers use to write software for Nvidia silicon. Rivos’ planned tool should make it easier for customers to switch from the chip giant’s GPUs.
Rivos is reportedly finalizing a deal that would see it supply processors to a major chipmaker. The companies are also expected to collaborate on the development of future products.
Photo: Unsplash
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