Synopsys launches three RISC-V chip designs. The fact that the EDA specialist relies so heavily on open source architecture illustrates its growing importance.

Synopsys supports RISC-V with three new embedded processor designs. This is good news for the alternative open source processor architecture, which brings additional legitimacy. Synopsys is expanding its ARC family with the new designs.

• The ARC-V RMX is a 32-bit chip for extremely low consumption
• The ARC-V RHX is also a 32-bit processor, but has higher performance
• The ARC-V RPX Finally, it is a 64-bit CPU with enough power to run applications you typically find on Linux systems.

Synopsys sees open processor architecture becoming more important and wants to meet customer interest. That’s why Syopsys also joins the board Technical Steering Committee from RISC-V International, which manages the architectural standard.

Other chip designers can license and further develop the designs or integrate them into other systems. You can compare the approach a bit with that of Arm and the ARM architecture.

Openness is an advantage

The openness of RISC-V is a huge advantage for organizations. Europe, for example, is working with the architecture as the basis for its own chips and NASA has also dared to adopt RISC-V to design the CPU that will power future space computers.

Arm, for its part, is not blind to the challenges that RISC-V could pose. Earlier this week, the company invested in Rasberry Pi, in part for a closer relationship with IoT developers. The designs Synopsys is introducing here are direct competitors to chips built on the ARM architecture using Arm designs.

Synopsys is no stranger to the world of chip design and is known above all as a specialist Electronic design automation (EDA), in which the various components of a chip are combined into a whole. The company’s tools there successfully rely on AI.