What's up with SiFive?

[SiliconWizard]

https://siliconangle.com/2023/10/24/risc-v-startup-sifive-reportedly-lets-go-engineers-executives/

[coppice]

That announcement is weird. If you are an IP company you need to push the same IP into as many customers as possible, to get economies of scale. The announcement says they are canning their off the shelf cores, and will only make custom ones.

[MK14]

Article by: Dr. Ian Cutress (previous Anand-Tech guy).

Which also seems to wants to know what is going on.

https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/the-risk-of-risc-v-whats-going-on

Edit: One thought that comes to mind.  Is that the US government, seemed intent to kill off RISC-V for political (China) reasons.  Maybe something has happened, behind the scenes?

Or the company is in a bad shape, financially speaking?

Edit2: A youtube comment, (so could be totally wrong), is claiming "SiFive made job listings for all the laid off positions, but located in India. So they're outsourcing.".

Source:

[ataradov]

I can't find any other good sources for this information. While the tone of the statement from the company confirms that something is going on, the rest remains to be confirmed.

what would those executives do if all the engineers are gone? You either close shop entirely, or things are not that bad.

And "US government killing RISC-V" is the same level as "California is killing red M&Ms".

[MK14]

I can't find any other good sources for this information. While the tone of the statement from the company confirms that something is going on, the rest remains to be confirmed.

And "US government killing RISC-V" is the same level as "California is killing red M&Ms".

In my linked to article above.  It explains that a number of sources, have been used to check the information.

[ataradov]

Multiple sources may be multiple employees in the same department that were let go. I can see them not wanting to do custom cores for example, and wanting to focus on a core set of standard cores.

In fact, custom cores sounds like a nightmare to manage. I can see a company take on that nightmare at the beginning to generate some income, but eventually you don't want to deal with it. Especially if you are trying to going against ARM.

[ataradov]

Edit2: A youtube comment, (so could be totally wrong), is claiming "SiFive made job listings for all the laid off positions, but located in India. So they're outsourcing.".

On their site there are 4 open positions in India. And there were news from lat year where they opened an office in India (https://www.sifive.com/blog/sifive-expands-presence-in-india-to-keep-up-with-the), so I don't know if this is related to the recent news.

It is possible that they planned it in advance, of course.

India makes sense as a location for tech companies. Not only for cost reasons, but they are also investing a lot of money into local technology development.

[SiliconWizard]

Multiple sources may be multiple employees in the same department that were let go. I can see them not wanting to do custom cores for example, and wanting to focus on a core set of standard cores.

Yes, but apparently they would be doing the exact opposite of that.
Indeed, all this requires more information, that'll be interesting to see how it all unfolds.
If anyone here works at SiFive (although I'd guess that in this case, they may not be allowed to talk about it yet), or has otherwise insider knowledge, would be great to hear you. (You can claim that you have zero link to SiFive and are just speculating, if you don't want to get in trouble, just give a subtle hint that you do.)

[TimFox]

A very recent news item: roughly 5 PM Eastern Daylight Time today.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sifive-lays-off-hundreds-of-risc-v-developers

[ataradov]

So, clickbait title "Why has the most influential RISC-V company just fired everyone?" transforms into 20% layoff, which is pretty standard with resent industry slowdown.

[MK14]

So, clickbait title "Why has the most influential RISC-V company just fired everyone?" transforms into 20% layoff, which is pretty standard with resent industry slowdown.

I'm speculating.  But maybe this information has 'leaked out', too early.  Before they (SiFive) have had time to inform everyone involved, and before the official announcements, are fully agreed and polished off, by management.

I.e. Tell the people who are being layed off first.

Then later, make an official announcement, to the world.

[TimFox]

From the company announcement in my post above:

“In a statement sent to Tom’s Hardware late on Tuesday, SiFive confirmed that it was laying off about 20% of its employees (~ 140) from a variety of different groups.“As we identify and focus on our greatest opportunities, SiFive is shifting to best meet our customers’s fast-changing requirements by undergoing a strategic refocusing of all our global teams,” a statement by SiFive reads. “Unfortunately, with this realignment, approximately 20% of employees across all different business groups and levels were impacted. The employees are receiving severance and outplacement assistance.”

I've seen this kind of employment adjustment made many times in the past.

[SiliconWizard]

It's been announced on Reuters, so it definitely doesn't look like an unfortunate leak.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/open-source-arm-competitor-sifive-lays-off-20-staff-2023-10-24/

[jwet]

This is a much less dire situation than you might think- its just a realignment- the company is very healthy but finds itself a bit off track either accidentally or purposefully.  I suggest you read some of the EE Professional Journals like EE Times- it will give you a better perspective of what is really going on.

SiFive has two business directions- the one that is most visible to developers and hobbyists is their standard products of RISC-V based products and cheap dev boards.  They have seeded the market with some standard products called "Essentials", these are promotion and development vehicles. They made a strong push into the market to enable it with tools, partnerships, etc.  These standard products can be looked at as development systems.  They needed to do this but this wasn't their real goal.  This work is complete and now they are realigning to do more of their real goal- custom IP.  As a little startup, they probably liked the revenue produced by these products but it was a distraction and was muddying their image in the market.  They want to be "ARM not Microchip".  The real business is and has always been customs for big customers like automotive.  They will now focus on this solely.  Developers and Hobbyists often don't see the real strategy a company is pursuing- they get too close to their products and miss the point of the business.

[abeyer]

now they are realigning to do more of their real goal- custom IP

That seems to be the exact opposite of what the linked press release says:

The company is scaling back its effort to offer customized designs for customers, beyond the standard blueprints that are available.

[SiliconWizard]

They want to become like ARM? I don't want to sound ominous, but I personally don't think it's ever going to happen.

I'm not going to go into all the details of why I don't, but one first major point is that RISC-V is nothing like ARM. It's an open-source ISA, and it's the main reason why it has gotten that much traction, especially in asian countries. It's a key to independence for everyone using it. ARM both owns the ISA and the cores. That's a very different business model. ARM has already had its own set of difficulties, but say they opened-sourced their ISAs and I don't give them much time before the beginning of the end for them.

Yes, many are jumping on the RISC-V bandwagon, and many are doing that on their own rather than call SiFive. That's not something you could ever do with ARM.

Even if SiFive was very, utterly, extremely good with their cores, customizations and customer support, that probably would never be enough to get to the point where ARM has gotten (and may fall from one of these days, probably the days are counted.)

More generally speaking regarding startups in general, the business models of startups are almost never sustainable. That's not what a startup is. And startups also almost never become big, established businesses - they eventually get sold to a big fish, or die. That's what the destiny of a startup is. And in this particular case, while I don't have all figures about SiFive's results and how healthy they are, I wouldn't be surprised if they were not *that* healthy.

Let's just recall that they "almost" got sold to Intel. Even if one can consider the failure a good thing here, whatever really happened, a failed acquisition for a startup is never a good event financially speaking.

Just a few thoughts. I've known quite a few startups and have worked in a couple, and all this looks unfortunately pretty familiar.

So anyway, good luck to them. Unless, of course, they get some "unexpected" help from the US, desperate to fight China, who knows. And curious again to see what's going to happen in the coming months/years.
Also just curious to have some insider views.

[coppice]

They want to become like ARM? I don't want to sound ominous, but I personally don't think it's ever going to happen.

SiFive appear to be backing away from producing a set of off the shelf, time tested cores, and putting their emphasis on custom cores. That would make them the very opposite of ARM. ARM hates customisation. They make it hard for their customers to have even minor customisation, unless they pay an ARM and a leg for the privilege. Have you seen the amount people pay for an "architecture licence" to create a custom ARM core?

[jwet]

I'm not commenting on if they'll succeed, just what they're up to.  Again read EE Times.  I think they've got a long haul ahead but I think most people didn't really understand the press release.

Below is a pretty good short read about RISC-V, etc from EET for a year back.
https://www.eetimes.com/examining-the-top-five-fallacies-about-risc-v/

[ejeffrey]

SiFive appear to be backing away from producing a set of off the shelf, time tested cores, and putting their emphasis on custom cores.

That is claimed by the siliconangle article linked in the first post but appears be be just speculation and doesn't agree with any of the other articles or the statement from sifive which is that their existing product line will continue and they are reducing customization.

Which seems kind of obvious. Even if they were going to reduce development effort on expanding their off the shelf portfolio, discontinuing your entire product line of already developed licensable IP would be a nonsensical thing to do.

[djacobow]

It is possible to split the difference between totally custom processors and a fixed ISA. I worked at Tensilica back in the day and we built configurable and customizable processor IP. Honestly, the customization technology was far ahead of its time: you described the customization you wanted in a special language and the verilog, testbench, compiler, headers, semi-hosted simulator, System V models, everything came out ready to go. The key to any customization approach like this is putting the right constraints on what can be done. Xtensa processors could have custom datapaths, but also hardware FIFOs that led directly in and out of the processor, and various other interesting ways to communicate with the outside world independent of the load/store unit.

Oh, those were heady days, and we had a lot of fun, but the idea didn't catch on for various reasons.

In any case, if SiFive were pursuing some level of fully- or partially-automated customization, that would not be ridiculous.

By the way, that article linked is written by David Patterson -- not exactly a nobody in this field.

I'm not commenting on if they'll succeed, just what they're up to.  Again read EE Times.  I think they've got a long haul ahead but I think most people didn't really understand the press release.

Below is a pretty good short read about RISC-V, etc from EET for a year back.
https://www.eetimes.com/examining-the-top-five-fallacies-about-risc-v/

[jwet]

abeyer- re-read that sentence a few times.  Its pretty ambiguous and poorly written.

What it says is that they are scaling back their current efforts (standard products) so that they can pursue custom solutions.

I can see how you could find the other meaning too.  Imprecise communication...