Akeana Unveils RISC-V Chip Designs to Challenge Arm Dominance

Akeana, a semiconductor design company, has unveiled new RISC-V chip designs after raising $100 million in funding over the past three years.

Product launch and company mission: Akeana has formally introduced its line of intellectual property (IP) solutions, aiming to revolutionize the semiconductor industry with customizable RISC-V processors.

• The company’s goal is to challenge the status quo of legacy vendors and architectures, such as Arm, by offering equitable licensing options and high-performance processors.
• Akeana’s products are designed to cater to various semiconductor markets, from microcontrollers to cloud computing.
• The company is also actively engaged in AI compute solutions, with plans to include AI-accelerated processors in its lineup.

Product lineup: Akeana has introduced four distinct intellectual property solutions, including three processor lines and SoC IP, all ready for customer delivery.

• The Akeana 100 Series features highly configurable 32-bit RISC-V cores suitable for embedded microcontrollers, edge gateways, and personal computing devices.
• The Akeana 1000 Series offers 64-bit RISC-V cores with MMU support for rich operating systems, optional multi-threading, and AI computation extensions.
• The Akeana 5000 Series represents the company’s high-performance line, designed to outperform established competitors in demanding applications for next-gen devices, laptops, and data centers.
• Processor System IP includes various IP blocks necessary for creating processor SoCs, enabling advanced features for large coherent mesh multi-core systems.

AI capabilities: Akeana is developing AI-focused solutions to meet the growing demand for specialized computing power.

• The company has designed an AI Matrix computation engine to offload Matrix Multiply operations for AI acceleration.
• This engine is configurable in size and supports various data types, optimizing data sharing within the system.
• Akeana plans to announce more detailed AI solutions at a later date.

Industry positioning and competition: Akeana positions itself as a pure IP company, focusing on processors and processor system IP.

• The company’s main competitor is Arm, the incumbent in the processor IP space.
• Other competitors include RISC-V IP companies like SiFive, MIPS, and Andes, as well as companies with broader strategies such as Tenstorrent, Ventana, and Rivos.
• Akeana differentiates itself by offering high-performance processors, a broad product portfolio, and a focus on customization to enable customers to achieve optimal performance with minimal time to market.

Company background and support: Akeana has garnered significant financial backing and industry support to fuel its ambitious goals.

• The company has raised over $100 million in capital from prominent investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, and Fidelity.
• Akeana is a member of the RISC-V board of directors and participates in the RISE project to accelerate software availability for RISC-V.
• Headquartered in San Jose, California, Akeana has more than 150 employees and a growing patent portfolio.

Broader implications: Akeana’s entry into the semiconductor IP market with its RISC-V-based solutions could potentially disrupt the existing ecosystem dominated by established players like Arm.

• The company’s focus on customization and high performance, coupled with equitable licensing options, may attract customers looking for alternatives to traditional architectures.
• As the demand for AI-capable processors continues to grow, Akeana’s development of specialized AI solutions could position it as a key player in this rapidly evolving market.
• The success of Akeana and other RISC-V-based companies could accelerate the adoption of open-source hardware architectures in the semiconductor industry, potentially leading to increased innovation and competition.