SiFive’s highest performance Risc-V IP

Called the Performance P550, the intellectual property is said to deliver a SPECInt 2006 score of 8.65/GHz, “making it the highest performance Risc-V processor available today, and comparable to existing proprietary solutions in the application processor space” according to the company.

April 2024 update: SiFive releases a quad P550 core development board

THis is the start of the SiFive’s Performance series, and the P550 launched alongside the P270, SiFive’s first Linux-capable processor with support for the RISC-V vector extension v1.0 RC.

“SiFive Performance is a significant milestone in our commitment to deliver a scalable portfolio of Risc-V cores,” said SiFive co-founder and CTO Yunsup Lee. “These two products cover performance points and application areas from vector processors that easily displace yesterday’s architectures, to the bleeding edge.”

Evolved from SiFive’s U84 microarchitecture, Performance P550 has a thirteen-stage, triple-issue, out-of-order pipeline compatible with the Risc-V RV64GC ISA (instruction set architecture). It scales up to four-core complex configurations.

Performance P270 has an 8-stage, dual-issue, in-order pipeline compatible with the Risc-V RV64GCV ISA. A product called ‘Recode’ is available to translate existing SIMD software from selected architectures to Risc-V Vector assembly code for the Vector Extension v 1.0RC.

Intel is offering the cores on its foundry service. “We are pleased to be a development partner with SiFive to showcase the performance of their P550 on our 7nm Horse Creek platform,” said Intel CTO Amber Huffman. “By combining Intel’s interface IP such as DDR and PCIe with SiFive’s highest performance processor, Horse Creek will provide a development vehicle for RISC-V applications.”