SiFive Lays Off Hundreds of RISC-V Developers (tomshardware.com) 17
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: SiFive, one of the key companies in the RISC-V ecosystem, is undergoing a significant restructuring marked by extensive layoffs and apparently a shift in business focus, reports More Than Moore. The company is seemingly retracting from its pre-designed core offerings, which means it may focus on custom cores instead. Meanwhile, the move casts uncertainty over SiFive's future in general along with its contributions to the RISC-V.
RISC-V has become quite a popular choice for making miniature low-cost cores, but there are several companies who are working on higher-performance RISC-V-based offerings. SiFive is one of such companies offering ready-to-use designs and also making custom cores based on what customers need. But now, SiFive has laid off somewhere between 100 to over 300 employees from around 700 in mid-October. Most of these were engineers, along with some sales and product personnel. Meanwhile, the company's leaders, including CEO Patrick Little, are still there. SiFive issued the following statement to Tom's Hardware: "As we identify and focus on our greatest opportunities, SiFive is shifting to best meet our customers' fast-changing requirements by undergoing a strategic refocusing of all our global teams. 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.
SiFive continues to be excited about the long-term opportunities for the company and for RISC-V. The growth of the company has never been stronger and the opportunities never better. We are well funded for years in the future and continue to work with the market leaders in every segment. We remain focused on our four product groups, essential, intelligence, performance and automotive, and as we explained in a press event earlier this month, have a robust roadmap to meet the needs of these markets. We see tremendous new opportunities in AI and with Consumer products like wearables and mobile as Google brings Android to the RISC-V ecosystem. We will continue to offer customization for specific customers, offering standard and custom products where it makes sense from a business standpoint."
RISC-V has become quite a popular choice for making miniature low-cost cores, but there are several companies who are working on higher-performance RISC-V-based offerings. SiFive is one of such companies offering ready-to-use designs and also making custom cores based on what customers need. But now, SiFive has laid off somewhere between 100 to over 300 employees from around 700 in mid-October. Most of these were engineers, along with some sales and product personnel. Meanwhile, the company's leaders, including CEO Patrick Little, are still there. SiFive issued the following statement to Tom's Hardware: "As we identify and focus on our greatest opportunities, SiFive is shifting to best meet our customers' fast-changing requirements by undergoing a strategic refocusing of all our global teams. 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.
SiFive continues to be excited about the long-term opportunities for the company and for RISC-V. The growth of the company has never been stronger and the opportunities never better. We are well funded for years in the future and continue to work with the market leaders in every segment. We remain focused on our four product groups, essential, intelligence, performance and automotive, and as we explained in a press event earlier this month, have a robust roadmap to meet the needs of these markets. We see tremendous new opportunities in AI and with Consumer products like wearables and mobile as Google brings Android to the RISC-V ecosystem. We will continue to offer customization for specific customers, offering standard and custom products where it makes sense from a business standpoint."
hopefully they'll be OK (Score:3, Insightful)
With a lot of companies like nVidia developing RISC-V (and CPU) tech hopefully the ex-SiFive employees can find new jobs quickly.
Could you imagine (Score:2)
Opportunities in the vacation timeshare sector (Score:2)
Just wait until they re-focus their synergies to leverage Java-based enterprise hypervisor solutions hosted in the cloud.
I'm seeing companies with "bitcoin" in their name or url are finding new opportunities in the vacation timeshare sector. Seriously, not a joke. Got some junk mail from one.
Re:Could you imagine (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry, but I don't work in marketing.
I have standards.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you imagine hiring managers who speak like that?
Or reporting to them?
Or investing in their firms?
Not me.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you imagine hiring managers who speak like that?
Or reporting to them?
Or investing in their firms?
Not me.
Most people can and most people do. You may as well. The way my manager interacts with me is completely different to how he interacts with further up. The way someone talks to an employee is different to how they talk to the public.
It's called PR. You're part of it, even if you don't know it.
Editors! (Score:2)
and though "what kind of marketing-speak is that? Did they copy from a press release?" Well, turns out that yes, they did. But you wouldn't know that, because the paragraph did not start with a quotation mark, which is something one should use in multi-paragraph q [google.com]
Not to worry (Score:2)
I know they are 'important'... (Score:2)
...but they are still about 25% too big.
This overgrowth leads to drastic corrections. I hope they survive, I want more SiFive product to toy with.
Doesn't Add Up (Score:3)
"... which means it may focus on custom cores instead"
They fired all the engineers, and ditched their in-house products to develop custom cores? Who's going to design these custom cores? Intel?
Re: (Score:1)
Who's going to design these custom cores?
Marketing.
hahaha no (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Which is a pity. There are a lot of interesting CPU architectures out there that are very good at specialist tasks and are being replaced with processors that are basically ok-to-mediocre at everything but not actually bad at anything so are much cheaper in general purpose computing, especially in an environment filled with virtual computers and "clouds".
We live in a computing world that's suboptimal for everything but price, where price is the real driver, not results.
Re: (Score:2)
This week's announcement that AMD and nvidia are, along with Qualcomm, making ARM64 computers ensures that RISC-V will remain Windows free for another decade.
If the US pulls out of designing RISC-V, they leave the budget Linux box sector to the Chinese. e.g. I was kind of hoping Sifive would produce a CPU that would kill off AllWinner's 'legacy' Cortex A53 products which still linger after a decade - they were close and getting closer to Rockchip RK3588...
Re: (Score:2)