( ESNUG 588 Item 26 ) --------------------------------------------- [10/30/20]
Subject: Naveed on SiFive's reaction to ARM's reactions to SiFive's actions
Virtual DAC'20 Troublemakers Panel
Cooley: Naveed.
Naveed: Yes, sir.
Cooley: On last year's panel, you said SiFive was making big inroads
against ARM. You said you had 70% of the cores that ARM had
in the portfolio in only 3 years. (See ESNUG 588 #7.)
Since then ARM has expanded; they're not sitting down. They're
expanded to have stuff going directly against the RISC-V
portfolio like Neon and things like that.
How are you catching up? Or are you?
Naveed: I think the interesting thing about SiFive is that we are a very
interesting start-up in the sense that we are a company which has
all the customers that you'd like to have. We have all of them.
We have close to 180 customers. Every large company. And I
always make a joke, everybody but Broadcom and Marvell is using
us, and this is a fact.
The reason it happened is because they all started replacing
their embedded cores. So, we got inroads.
Our approach in all the customers is what we call land and
expand. We are landed. Literally everybody who is anybody in
the business -- we already have them as a customer. All of them
basically told us a year ago,
"Guys, all these cores are good. We need high-end cores".
So, we have dramatically shifted our SiFive engineering to go
into very high-end cores.
That's what we are doing now. Because that's what people want.
You know we were in lower end, middle end cores. But now, all
our new offerings that we come out with next year, 2021, is
going to be high end.
The second thing that has happened with RISC-V is that we have
been joined by other people now. Like Alibaba has a complete
unit which is targeting pretty high-end cores. And I think you
will see a couple of other companies come.
ARM may have a lot of R&D and things like that. We at SiFive
are putting a lot on the high-end, but I think there are other
people as well because of Open Source nature a lot of attraction
in China and things like that.
I think in the next year in 2021 you will see higher and higher
end cores come, which is the mainstay of ARM cores. I think
that's what you will see starting probably April of 2021.
Cooley: April next year? What's specific in April -- what do you mean?
Naveed: We at SiFive will be releasing our pretty high-end core in
April 2021.
Cooley: How's that in contrast to... I'm trying to think... Apple just
put out a press release, that they're using ARM for their 5 nm
chip that's used in all their Mac chips. That's a big thing.
How do you compete against that?
Naveed: Well I think the biggest barrier in the high-end cores is
actually not the core. That is important, but I think it's
the software stack.
Cooley: Oh yeah, it's huge. It's huge.
Naveed: So that [SiFive's software stack] is where a lot of the work
is going on. A lot of RISC-V companies have banded together
and are working together. A lot of investment is going on;
and all over the world.
|
"The biggest barrier in the high-end cores is
actually not the core. That is important, but I think it's the software stack."
- Naveed Sherwani of SiFive
|
I think that's what is going to limit. It's not us putting out
a core. It is that particular company committing to building
the software stack and I think that is going to be the limiting
factor. Us having a core is just the first step.
We have a long road ahead. I don't want to give the impression
that next year April 2012 core comes out and then by June 2021
everybody will have shifted to our SiFive core. That's not the
case. The reason for that is the software stack -- that's going
to take a few years to catch up. The availability of our high
end core is the first step.
Cooley: Okay, one of the other questions I had was that ARM responded
directly to you guys -- SiFive and then the RISC-V market
altogether. They [ARM] basically cut their prices in half.
I saw when they did their Flexible Access program. I was shocked
at the price ARM was saying. It was $75,000 a year for a
single chip, $200,000 for unlimited number of chips. And you
don't even have to do a contract until you tape out. I was like
Oh My God they're cutting their prices radically. Doesn't that
kind of damage your SiFive profitability?
Naveed: Well, first of all we have always said that we are all for what
we call the Democracy of Silicon. Day One we said that one
very important part of our DNA is to make sure that people all
over the world can participate in the silicon revolution.
We are very happy that other people who make processor cores are
lowering their prices because it actually helps the cause of the
Democracy of the Silicon. That's very good.
We - I'm talking about SiFive, not RISC-V -- we have always said
that in the long run, we want to enable people who are doing
silicon. And we at SiFive want to be making money just not
in the IP business but in the silicon business.
In other words when ARM puts out a core, they charge a bigger
number - $10 million, $20 million, $50 million -- and then they
overcharge a 3% royalty. They are trying to change it to a
much higher percentage now.
But our approach at SiFive was we'll do that, and we will help
build silicon. If you help build silicon, then you get the
ASIC partner. We have a different way of making money. We
are not shying away from ASIC. We are going to do that, and
we have invested in building silicon and I think that's how
we want to make money in addition to selling our cores. So that
is not impacted by them [ARM] lowering their prices.
Cooley: So just for numbers, because I like numbers, approximately how
many customers do you at SiFive have? Companies?
Naveed: I think we have... I think our design wins are close to 200.
Unique numbers, it depends on how many people are repeat
customers.
[ Editor's Note: Last year SiFive had 102 design wins, so they've
close to doubled their design win footprint in 12 months. - John ]
Cooley: Well I was going to go to that. How many are repeat and how
many are unique?
Naveed: We are now *almost* in the second cycle of most customers. Most
customers picked us up 3 years ago, 2 years ago, and now we are
in the second cycle. So, I would say that unique customers are
probably in the range of 100.
Cooley: And then how many are repeat?
Naveed: I think... that's why... probably I would say...
Cooley: Are you saying you have 100 repeat customers?
Naveed: No. I think total unique customers for SiFive are in the
range of 100 or 110. I would say at least 20% repeat.
Cooley: Okay, alright, cool. Thank you.
[ Editor's Note: That 20% repeat rate was on January 2020. Now
in October 2020, it's at a 33% repeat customer rate as more
of the 3 year licensing contracts come up for renewal. - John ]
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