Cor, that’s a shot in the arm for this upstart CPU ISA
RISC-V chip biz SiFive says its processors are being used to manage AI workloads to some degree in Google datacenters.
According to SiFive, the processor in question is its Intelligence X280, a multi-core RISC-V design with vector extensions, optimized for AI/ML applications in the datacenter. When combined with the matrix multiplication units (MXU) lifted from Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), this is claimed to deliver greater flexibility for programming machine-learning workloads.
Essentially, the X280’s general-purpose RV64 cores in the processor run code that manages the device, and feeds machine-learning calculations into Google’s MXUs as required to complete jobs. The X280 also includes its own vector math unit that can handle operations the accelerator units can’t.