SiFive U8-Series To Offer Much Greater RISC-V Performance

[pkese]

Both area efficiency and performance/watt are ambiguous metrics -- we don't know how much they benefit from the 7nm manufacturing process.

Either
a) you didn't read the SiFive's announcement,
b) you read it carelessly, or
c) you didn't understand it.

[pkese]

But the thing here is...they are operating at 2.6Ghz, and expecting performance competitive with Socs that work at 1.8-2Ghz??

All that matters in the end is number of transistors, total performance and performance per watt.
Whether it is implemented with long and thin or short and fat pipeline is an implementation detail.

[Edit] ... or low IPC with high frequency.

[zxy_thf]

According to their own announcement:

The SiFive U84 standard core offers an incredible increase of 2X better area efficiency and 1.5X better performance/watt, with very competitive performance when compared to an Arm® Cortex®-A72 processor.

Both area efficiency and performance/watt are ambiguous metrics -- we don't know how much they benefit from the 7nm manufacturing process.

[tuxd3v]

If they claim its competitive with the ARM A72, in SpecInt2006, it is a good comparison..
Because A72 has a strong Integer performance..
But the thing here is...they are operating at 2.6Ghz, and expecting performance competitive with Socs that work at 1.8-2Ghz??

Also it was the idea I got.. their validation was guess estimated.. not a real implementation..

[pkese]

According to their own announcement:

The SiFive U84 standard core offers an incredible increase of 2X better area efficiency and 1.5X better performance/watt, with very competitive performance when compared to an Arm® Cortex®-A72 processor.

[microcode]

Disclaimer: I don't know how successful SiFive is at selling their implementations.
I think SiFive would make a better mark on the industry and the world if they continued development,
freed up their implementations, but found funding otherwise.
Right now, there are better cores with more features, better ecosystems and probably for less money.
Competing with ARM and other established vendors with a IP-vendor 101 business model feels like they are barking up the wrong tree.

They still may end up doing so. I think they have something really valuable in their tools for building SoCs.

[milkylainen]

Disclaimer: I don't know how successful SiFive is at selling their implementations.
I think SiFive would make a better mark on the industry and the world if they continued development,
freed up their implementations, but found funding otherwise.
Right now, there are better cores with more features, better ecosystems and probably for less money.
Competing with ARM and other established vendors with a IP-vendor 101 business model feels like they are barking up the wrong tree.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: SiFive U8-Series To Offer Much Greater RISC-V Performance

There is much greater performance potential out of RISC-V now with SiFive having announced the U8-Series...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SiFiv-U8-Series-RISC-V-New