This week, Intel and Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) announced to jointly invest 400million euros (about 426million US dollars) to build a new laboratory to develop risc-v based processors that can be used to build zettascale supercomputers In addition to processors, the lab also focuses on artificial intelligence applications and processor applications for autonomous vehicle.
It is speculated that the research laboratory will be set up in Barcelona, Spain, and will receive 400million euros from Intel and the Spanish government in the next 10 years. The fundamental purpose of the joint research laboratory is to develop chips based on the open source risc-v instruction set architecture (ISA), which can be used in a wide range of applications, including artificial intelligence accelerators, autonomous vehicles and high-performance computing.
The establishment of the joint laboratory does not mean that the risc-v-based processors developed by the laboratory will be applied to the first generation zettascale supercomputer platform, but that the company is willing to make additional investment in risc-v. After all, last year Intel tried to acquire sifive, a leading risc-v CPU developer and one of the top sponsors of risc-v international, a nonprofit organization that supports Isa.
Although about $21.3 million is not a small amount, Intel will invest more money in its X86 based products in the next few years. Therefore, the expenditure on risc-v processors does not mean that attention to x86 design is reduced. Instead, throughout its history, Intel has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in non x86 architectures (including RISC based i960/i860 designs in the 1980s, arm in the 2000s, and VLIW based ia64/itanium in the 1990s and 21st century). Eventually, these architectures were abandoned, but the technologies developed for them were incorporated into x86 products.
By launching risc-v, Intel may kill several birds with one stone. First, suppose that the engineers of the joint laboratory try to design a CPU technology more suitable for zettaflops class supercomputers. In this case, Intel will be able to use it for its products. As an additional reward, Intel's OEM service department may become the preferred factory for cpu/socs developed by joint laboratories.