Akeana Exits Stealth Mode with Comprehensive RISC-V Processor Portfolio (2024)

Press Releaseby

Akeana, the company committed to driving dramatic change in semiconductor IP innovation and performance, has announced its official company launch approximately three years after its foundation, having raised over $100 million in capital, with support from A-list investors including Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, and Fidelity. Today's launch marks the formal availability of the company's expansive line of IP solutions that are uniquely customizable for any workload or application.

Formed by the same team that designed Marvell's ThunderX2 server chips, Akeana offers a variety of IP solutions, including microcontrollers, Android clusters, AI vector cores and subsystems, and compute clusters for networking and data centers. Akeana moves the industry beyond the status quo of legacy vendors and architectures, like Arm, with equitable licensing options and processors that fill and exceed current performance gaps.

Akeana released three processor lines and SoC IP, in tandem with the formal launch of the company, all ready for customer delivery, including:

Akeana 100 Series: a line of highly configurable processors with 32-bit RISC-V cores that supports applications from embedded microcontrollers to edge gateways, to personal computing devices.

Akeana 1000 Series: a processor line that includes 64-bit RISC-V cores and an MMU to support rich operating systems, while maintaining low power and requiring low die area. These processors support in-order or out-of-order pipelines, multi-threading, vector extension, hypervisor extension and other extensions that are part of recent and upcoming RISC-V profiles, as well as optional AI computation extensions.

Akeana 5000 Series: a line of extreme performance processors representing industry performance leadership, outperforming established competitors and the RISC-V ecosystem. This line provides ultimate differentiation with 64-bit RISC-V cores optimized for demanding applications in next-gen devices, laptops, data centers, and cloud infrastructure. These processors are compatible with the Akeana 1000 Series but with much higher single thread performance.

Processor System IP: a collection of IP blocks needed for creation of processor SoCs, including a Coherent Cluster Cache, I/O MMU, and Interrupt Controller IPs. In addition, Akeana provides Scalable Mesh and Coherence Hub IP (compatible with AMBA CHI) to build large coherent compute subsystems for Data Centers and other use cases.

AI Matrix computation engine: designed to offload Matrix Multiply operations for AI acceleration. Configurable in size and supporting various data types, it may be attached to the coherent cluster cache block like a core for optimal data sharing.

"Our team has a proven track record of designing world-class server chips, and we are now applying that expertise to the broader semiconductor market as we formally go to market," said Rabin Sugumar, Akeana CEO. "With our rich portfolio of customizable cores and special security, debug, RAS, and telemetry features, we provide our customers with unparalleled performance, observability, and reliability. We believe our products will revolutionize the industry."

"The renaissance of silicon, sweeping through our industry, is driving the rise of architectural innovations like RISC-V," said Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield. "Akeana has everything needed to become a breakout company - a world-class team of founders and investors, the most comprehensive IP, a fair licensing model, and a compelling value proposition for aiding chipmakers in designing workload-optimized silicon solutions. I look forward to partnering with Rabin and the team in the next phase of their journey."

"The migration to RISC-V is in full flight," said Mamoon Hamid, partner, Kleiner Perkins. "The majority of top semiconductor firms are transitioning to RISC-V, with many choosing Akeana due to its best in class performance."

Akeana's team of seasoned professionals, coupled with its commitment to delivering game-changing solutions, for data and AI-intensive use cases, makes it a new driving force in the industry --providing customers with cutting-edge capabilities to meet their unique semiconductor design needs. Akeana is a proud member of the RISC-V Board of Directors and is also participating in the RISE project to accelerate the availability of software for RISC-V.