RISC-V CPU and SoC design IP for next-generation computing platforms
SiFive designs and manufactures RISC-V-based processor IP and full-chip implementations. The stack reveals a deep hardware-verification operation: Verilog, SystemVerilog, UVM, and FPGA tooling dominate, paired with CI/CD automation (Jenkins, pytest, Robot Framework) and simulation (QEMU). The engineering-heavy hiring mix (15 of 19 roles) skews toward staff and senior IC designers, and active projects span RTL-to-GDSII physical implementation—indicating SiFive is scaling from IP licensing into full chip tapeout services. Pain points around RISC-V adoption and AI CPU performance suggest the market is still early, and SiFive is building both the toolchain maturity and performance benchmarks to drive broader ecosystem use.
SiFive creates RISC-V processor IP cores and complete SoC designs for semiconductor and system companies. The company operates across three layers: foundational IP (CPU cores, memory subsystems, debug/trace hardware), design automation and verification (in-house test infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines), and physical implementation (RTL-to-GDSII flow). Based in Santa Clara with engineering offices in India, the UK, and France, SiFive serves customers building next-generation CPUs, embedded processors, and AI accelerators on the RISC-V instruction set. The organization is primarily engineering-driven, with active focus on reducing time-to-market and improving verification automation across register and gate-level design processes.
SiFive uses Verilog, SystemVerilog, UVM, FPGA, and QEMU for hardware design and verification; Git, GitHub, Jenkins, Jira, pytest, and Robot Framework for CI/CD and build automation; and GDSII, JasperGold, and custom tooling for physical implementation and formal verification.
SiFive is developing RISC-V CPU implementations from RTL to GDSII, advancing debug/trace/profiling hardware, building scalable test automation and verification IP for memory subsystems, and optimizing AI CPU performance and workload execution on RISC-V architectures.
Other companies in the same industry, closest in size