Why has the most influential RISC-V startup just cut 130 people? (2.5 yrs old)(youtube.com)
youtube.com
Why has the most influential RISC-V startup just cut 130 people? (2.5 yrs old)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0DUHZ1e48U
8 comments
Someone pumped more money into SiFive, which seems like an astonishingly poor investment. Just figured I would re-post this video talking about what happens at the end of the SiFive investment cycle.
Layoffs just seem to be part of life in the US tech industry.
Qualcomm announced laying off 66 people in San Diego today. And hundreds more at Meta and Oracle. Qualcomm laid off 260 or so in San Diego a year and a half ago in September 2024.
I got laid off from SiFive in February 2020 (one of 80). My boss and my boss's boss (who was the one who called me in for the good news) were themselves gonzo three months later. It seemed to be a pivot away from doing so much general infrastructure software development in-house. Palmer had moved on to Google two months earlier (and Rivos/Meta since) ... had he seen the writing on the wall?
It didn't seem to be personal. The founders seemed to not know the details in advance, only the "professional" management.
Qualcomm announced laying off 66 people in San Diego today. And hundreds more at Meta and Oracle. Qualcomm laid off 260 or so in San Diego a year and a half ago in September 2024.
I got laid off from SiFive in February 2020 (one of 80). My boss and my boss's boss (who was the one who called me in for the good news) were themselves gonzo three months later. It seemed to be a pivot away from doing so much general infrastructure software development in-house. Palmer had moved on to Google two months earlier (and Rivos/Meta since) ... had he seen the writing on the wall?
It didn't seem to be personal. The founders seemed to not know the details in advance, only the "professional" management.
They laid off 80 people in the same time frame that everyone else was hiring because the cost of capital had fallen to zero (and in some industries below zero with government subsidies.) I don't think that's just "life in the tech industry," that's people who don't know what they're doing.
When I interviewed with Yunsup in 2017, the vision he was spinning was "we're going to make it very easy for people to produce application specific ICs with a toolbox of accelerators and a core ISA." That's where the whole "Moore's Law Only Ends Once" phrase came from... They wanted SiFive to be the "go to" fabless design bureau for when you wanted more performance than what you could squeeze out of the flattening performance curve.
It turns out that was hard. Harder than anyone in San Mateo or Milpitas could anticipate.
When I interviewed with Yunsup in 2017, the vision he was spinning was "we're going to make it very easy for people to produce application specific ICs with a toolbox of accelerators and a core ISA." That's where the whole "Moore's Law Only Ends Once" phrase came from... They wanted SiFive to be the "go to" fabless design bureau for when you wanted more performance than what you could squeeze out of the flattening performance curve.
It turns out that was hard. Harder than anyone in San Mateo or Milpitas could anticipate.
It didn't look to me like everyone else was hiring at the start of COVID. That's one reason I left the country after only 11 months of my H-1B visa.
> we're going to make it very easy for people to produce application specific ICs with a toolbox of accelerators and a core ISA
Yes I know, I was on the SiFive stand at the Embedded Linux Conference in Portland where Yunsup gave this presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxd93jb1OAk
> It turns out that was hard. Harder than anyone in San Mateo or Milpitas could anticipate.
Was that it?
My impression was that it turned out to be hard to find people who weren't already making high volume custom ASICs but wanted to (and already had the skills to know what they wanted). People who were already had an experienced team making custom chips just wanted to license a core.
And then the PolarFire SoC got you 90% of the way there (and Zynq ten years earlier of course) for $36 for a chip with a 667 MHz HiFive Unleashed plus 23k LEs if you valued rapid hardware iteration over a custom $1 FE-310 variant.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Microchip-Technology/MP...
I could be completely wrong of course. You were the Fuel Air Explosive at the customer coal-face, I'm just a programmer.
> we're going to make it very easy for people to produce application specific ICs with a toolbox of accelerators and a core ISA
Yes I know, I was on the SiFive stand at the Embedded Linux Conference in Portland where Yunsup gave this presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxd93jb1OAk
> It turns out that was hard. Harder than anyone in San Mateo or Milpitas could anticipate.
Was that it?
My impression was that it turned out to be hard to find people who weren't already making high volume custom ASICs but wanted to (and already had the skills to know what they wanted). People who were already had an experienced team making custom chips just wanted to license a core.
And then the PolarFire SoC got you 90% of the way there (and Zynq ten years earlier of course) for $36 for a chip with a 667 MHz HiFive Unleashed plus 23k LEs if you valued rapid hardware iteration over a custom $1 FE-310 variant.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Microchip-Technology/MP...
I could be completely wrong of course. You were the Fuel Air Explosive at the customer coal-face, I'm just a programmer.
> astonishingly poor investment
Very brave of you to put that on the Internet.
They claim to have customers using P870-D silicon today. That is about Neoverse N2 performance territory, except SiFive claims 25% smaller die area and lower power (at the same process size).
Now they have $400 million to push that further.
https://www.sifive.com/blog/investing-in-our-next-chapter-of...
If SiFive can grab even a fraction of a hyperscaler market, they are going to be worth a lot more than $3 billion.
Very brave of you to put that on the Internet.
They claim to have customers using P870-D silicon today. That is about Neoverse N2 performance territory, except SiFive claims 25% smaller die area and lower power (at the same process size).
Now they have $400 million to push that further.
https://www.sifive.com/blog/investing-in-our-next-chapter-of...
If SiFive can grab even a fraction of a hyperscaler market, they are going to be worth a lot more than $3 billion.
Do you want to buy my SiFive shares?
Oh... I should setup a Kalshi or Polymarket bet as to whether SiFive is still in business as an independent company in 2 or 3 years. Or if their IP was bought at greater than their current post-money or if it was a fire-sale.
Oh... I should setup a Kalshi or Polymarket bet as to whether SiFive is still in business as an independent company in 2 or 3 years. Or if their IP was bought at greater than their current post-money or if it was a fire-sale.
Seems I am not going to get offered those shares.
This thread is pointing to the "disaster" at SiFive a few years ago as evidence that they will do badly in the future.
What has happened since this attached video suggesting that they are in trouble two years ago?
Well, they just raised another $400 million for one and at a much higher valuation than they had when the video was created. I will take that kind of failure.
But is it just a con? Well, they released the P550 and small industry players like Red Hat have created distributions around it. And I can get it in a Framework laptop. It does not sound like SiFive is being ignored.
But most notably, they have customers running P870-D cores in silicon.
A lot seems to have happened since that video. The video deos not seem to have been a very good predictor of the future.
Yet, we are using that video to predict the future again? I am betting it will turn out like last time. So, sell me those shares.
This thread is pointing to the "disaster" at SiFive a few years ago as evidence that they will do badly in the future.
What has happened since this attached video suggesting that they are in trouble two years ago?
Well, they just raised another $400 million for one and at a much higher valuation than they had when the video was created. I will take that kind of failure.
But is it just a con? Well, they released the P550 and small industry players like Red Hat have created distributions around it. And I can get it in a Framework laptop. It does not sound like SiFive is being ignored.
But most notably, they have customers running P870-D cores in silicon.
A lot seems to have happened since that video. The video deos not seem to have been a very good predictor of the future.
Yet, we are using that video to predict the future again? I am betting it will turn out like last time. So, sell me those shares.
Yes. I will absolutely take both of those bets.
Do you have SiFive shares you can sell me? Real question.
Do you have SiFive shares you can sell me? Real question.