Tenstorrent Productizes RISC-V CPU And AI IP - EE Times

Abstract

Tenstorrent, a company prominent in developing AI systems, is shifting its business strategy by officially productizing and licensing its core intellectual property (IP). This offering includes both their proprietary high-performance RISC-V CPU cores and their specialized AI acceleration IP blocks. This move enables other semiconductor manufacturers to integrate Tenstorrent's proven compute technology into their custom silicon designs, fostering broader market adoption.

Report

Key Highlights

• Strategic Shift: Tenstorrent is expanding its business model from primarily building complete AI chips and systems to becoming a key provider of specialized semiconductor intellectual property (IP).
• Dual IP Offering: The company is making two critical component categories available for licensing: advanced RISC-V CPU cores and dedicated AI acceleration blocks.
• Commercial Availability: Productizing the IP means making these high-performance components readily available to third-party companies seeking to design custom silicon (ASICs).
• High Performance Focus: The offered IP is derived from technology already validated in Tenstorrent's high-performance AI processors (e.g., Grayskull and Wormhole).

Technical Details

• RISC-V CPU Cores: Tenstorrent's IP includes high-performance CPU cores based on the open-standard RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA), designed to handle control, supervisory, and general-purpose computing tasks within an accelerator chip.
• AI Acceleration IP: This IP is focused on efficient parallel computation required for machine learning workloads, encompassing both inference and potentially training capabilities.
• Architecture Inference: Based on Tenstorrent's established designs, the IP likely features a highly scalable, interconnected mesh network architecture, allowing for efficient communication between thousands of small compute elements (AI accelerators and local RISC-V cores).
• Target Applications: The IP is optimized for applications requiring high throughput and low power consumption, such as data center acceleration, edge AI processing, and automotive compute.

Implications

• RISC-V Ecosystem Maturity: The availability of a commercially proven, high-end CPU core designed by an established AI leader significantly bolsters the credibility and maturity of the commercial RISC-V IP landscape.
• Democratization of AI Hardware: By licensing the AI acceleration IP, Tenstorrent lowers the barrier to entry for companies wanting to develop highly customized, best-in-class AI accelerators without having to design the core compute blocks from scratch.
• New Revenue Stream: This IP productization opens a substantial new licensing revenue channel for Tenstorrent, diversifying its income beyond system sales.
• Increased Competition in AI ASICs: The offering encourages rapid innovation in the custom silicon market, allowing faster development of specialized hardware tailored for unique AI models and edge deployment scenarios.