Our New Partnership with Rambus and the DesignShare Economy

As we continue to expand our product offerings to better serve the rapidly growing RISC-V and SiFive community, we are always looking to work with companies (big and small) who share our vision.

On Monday, we proudly announced that we will form a new partnership with Rambus, a leader in the digital security, semiconductor and IP industries, to help us take the next step in democratizing access to custom silicon. Through the partnership, we will be able to offer Rambus’ cryptography technology on our Freedom platforms. These added components will not only improve end-point security across the entire Freedom family, but will also deliver on SiFive’s promise of reducing upfront costs associated with custom chip design.

Along with partnership, we are excited to share a new concept with you that we’ve been thinking about for quite some time here at SiFive: DesignShare.

What is DesignShare, and why is it needed, you might ask?

With the exponential increase in NRE and design costs as Moore’s law ends, the semiconductor industry is in need of a revolution to enable additional innovation. Otherwise, the number of new design starts will continue to decline. Up to now, the industry’s response to this has been to consolidate and scale—which will ultimately limit access to only the largest of companies.

DesignShare is a new concept in which companies like SiFive and Rambus make IP and components available to emerging markets and companies at a reduced cost to help spur innovation in the industry. Similar to how the foundry model created an entirely new class of fabless semiconductor companies (which no longer had to pay up front for an entire foundry), DesignShare will democratize access to custom silicon and world class IP and create an entirely new group of companies who can innovate at both the hardware and software levels.

We look forward to welcoming many more folks to the DesignShare Economy!

Learn more about SiFive's partnership with Rambus.