There is a change at the top of SiFive today with Patrick Little replacing Dr. Naveed Sherwani. While SemiAccurate thinks the timing is coincidental, this change comes at a time of heightened interest for SiFive and RISC-V in general.
Not many surprises here, Little comes from Qualcomm where he was a Senior VP and General Manager to assume the role of CEO and President of SiFive. He takes over from Dr. Sherwani who stays on as Chairman of the board of directors. At the same time SiFive announced they closed their Series E funding with an additional $61 million.
This comes at a very interesting time with Nvidia purchasing SiFive’s main competitor, ARM. SemiAccurate doesn’t think that particular acquisition will end well, something we are hearing echoed from the ARM licensees. While it is still early in the process, the RISC-V architecture and it’s main commercial proponent, SiFive, seem to be the logical place for ARM refugees to move. Some of this was already underway before last Sunday’s announcement but there has undoubtedly been an uptick in interest this week.
In light of that, it is going to be an interesting time for Mr. Little. The main competition, larger and with far more commercial ties, is going to be going through turmoil until the acquisition closes, if it does. ARM partners, the majority of which were threatened or actually sued by Nvidia over what SemiAccurate sees as baseless patent trolling, do not seem very willing to wait and see how magnanimous Nvidia’s reign is. SiFive is going to be an interesting place to be over the next few weeks with the change at the top only being a minor part of it.S|A
Charlie Demerjian
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