Ventana Micro Systems, a start-up founded by veterans within the semiconductor industry, unveils its first open-source based RISC-V processors for servers. The flexibility for clients to customize processors for their servers is a major selling feature for the RISC-V processors, next to its high-performance and security capabilities. Ventana now has raised $38 million in its Series B funding round.
“Ventana has created an innovative RISC-V architecture that addresses the market need for a high-performance, customizable and secure processor solution,” said Eyal Dagan, Executive Vice President of the Common Hardware Group at Cisco Systems.
Balaji Baktha and Greg Favor, industry experts with a track record of producing high-performance CPUs, established Ventana Micro Systems in 2018. Ventana provides multi-core chiplets with data center-class high-performance RISC-V CPUs with extendable instruction set capabilities.
Hyperscalers and other data center services providers can use the company’s customized SoC chiplet to accomplish fast productization while still being able to innovate and differentiate. Ventana’s computing chiplets are tailored for cloud, enterprise data center, 5G, edge compute, and automotive applications, delivering “best-in-class” single thread performance.
“Nearly half of compute spend is moving away from general purpose processors in favor of infrastructure compute and domain specific accelerators,” said Balaji Baktha, Founder and CEO of Ventana. “Ventana is perfectly positioned to capitalize on this trend with our high-performance cores built on the extensible RISC-V architecture, and our chiplet-based rapid productization approach.”
Deploying Unique SoC Chiplet Silicon
In comparison to the current IP paradigm, Ventana’s modular, scalable chiplet-based product strategy would allow for considerable time and cost savings throughout development. Clients may deploy their unique SoC chiplet silicon in the most optimal process node for the desired application, while Ventana’s compute chiplets may enhance performance by targeting cutting-edge process geometries.
Ventana provides a parallel die-to-die (D2D) system capable of very low latencies, high bandwidth, and low power to assure compatibility. The OCP Open Domain-Specific Architecture (ODSA) physical interface standard is supported by the D2D solution.
“Ventana is a great example of how RISC-V is unleashing new design possibilities, including data center implementation which has been traditionally dominated by proprietary approaches,” said Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International. “RISC-V has no licensing costs with complete design flexibility, providing Ventana’s customers with both cost and innovation advantages.”
