Intel Launches $1 Billion Fund to Build a Foundry Innovation Ecosystem : @VMblog

Intel
announced a new $1 billion fund to support early-stage startups
and established companies building disruptive technologies for the
foundry ecosystem. A collaboration between Intel Capital and Intel Foundry Services (IFS),
the fund will prioritize investments in capabilities that accelerate
foundry customers’ time to market – spanning intellectual property (IP),
software tools, innovative chip architectures and advanced packaging
technologies. Intel also announced partnerships with several companies
aligned with this fund and focused on key strategic industry
inflections: enabling modular products with an open chiplet platform and
supporting design approaches that leverage multiple instruction set
architectures (ISAs), spanning x86, Arm and RISC-V.

“Foundry
customers are rapidly embracing a modular design approach to
differentiate their products and accelerate time to market. Intel
Foundry Services is well-positioned to lead this major industry
inflection. With our new investment fund and open chiplet platform, we
can help drive the ecosystem to develop disruptive technologies across
the full spectrum of chip architectures.”
-Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO

How It Works: As
a key part of its IDM 2.0 strategy, Intel recently established IFS to
help meet the growing global demand for advanced semiconductor
manufacturing. In addition to providing leading-edge packaging and
process technology and committed capacity in the U.S. and Europe, IFS is
positioned to offer the foundry industry’s broadest portfolio of
differentiated IP, including all of the leading ISAs.

A
robust ecosystem is critical to helping foundry customers bring their
designs to life using IFS technologies. The new innovation fund was
created to strengthen the ecosystem in three ways:

“Intel
is an innovation powerhouse, but we know that not all good ideas
originate from within our four walls,” said Randhir Thakur, president of
Intel Foundry Services. “Innovation thrives in open and collaborative
environments. This $1 billion fund in partnership with Intel Capital – a
recognized leader in venture capital investing – will marshal the full
resources of Intel to drive innovation in the foundry ecosystem.”

Saf
Yeboah, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Intel,
said: “Intel Capital’s history and expertise are rooted in chips. Over
the last 30 years, we have invested over $5 billion into 120 companies
supporting the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, from the materials
coming out of the ground to the software tools used to implement a
design. Our investments, which range from pathfinding bets into
early-stage companies to deeply strategic and collaborative investments,
drive innovation across architecture, IP, materials, equipment and
design.”

About the Open RISC-V Ecosystem

A
key part of the IFS strategy is to offer a broad range of leadership IP
optimized for Intel process technologies. IFS is the only foundry to
offer IP optimized for all three of the industry’s leading ISAs: x86,
Arm and RISC-V.

As
the leading open-source ISA, RISC-V offers a level of scalability and
customization that is unique in the industry. There is strong demand
from foundry customers to support more RISC-V IP offerings. As part of
the new innovation fund, Intel is planning investments and offerings
that will strengthen the ecosystem and help drive further adoption of
RISC-V. The fund will help disruptive RISC-V companies innovate faster
through IFS by collaborating on technology co-optimization, prioritizing
wafer shuttles, supporting customer designs, building development
boards and software infrastructure and more.

Intel
is joining forces with leading partners in the RISC-V ecosystem,
including Andes Technology, Esperanto Technologies, SiFive and Ventana
Micro Systems. IFS plans to offer a range of validated RISC-V IP cores,
performance-optimized for different market segments. By partnering with
leading providers, IFS will optimize IP for Intel process technologies
to ensure that RISC-V runs best on IFS silicon across all types of
cores, from embedded to high-performance. Three types of RISC-V
offerings will be made available:

See “Fact Sheet: Catalyzing the RISC-V Ecosystem” to learn more about how IFS is catalyzing the RISC-V ecosystem with leading partners.

In
addition to hardware and IP, a rich open source software ecosystem is
critical for accelerating the growth and adoption of the RISC-V
processor and fully unlocking value for chip designers. IFS will sponsor
an open-source software development platform that allows for freedom in
experimentation, including partners across the ecosystem, universities
and consortia. To further this program, today the company announced that
it is joining RISC-V International, a global nonprofit organization supporting the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture and extensions.

“I’m
delighted that Intel, the company that pioneered the microprocessor 50
years ago, is now a member of RISC-V International,” said David
Patterson, emeritus professor at University of California, Berkeley,
distinguished engineer at Google and vice chair of the board for RISC-V
International.