German hardware startup Ubitium has secured funding to develop what the company says is a “revolutionary universal processor.” Ubitium’s plan is to have one chip that does it all without having to have separate processors for different functions. The do-it-all chip will be built around RISC-V architecture.
What is RISC-V?
RISC-V is an open-standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. Unlike proprietary ISAs such as x86 (used by Intel and AMD) or ARM, RISC-V is free and open, meaning anyone can use, modify, and implement it without paying licensing fees. Successful implementation of RISC-V architecture has been NVIDIA, which has RISC-V cores for embedded controllers in its GPUs, SiFive, Western Digital and Alibaba’s semiconductor division, T-Head.
The whole processor is built around boundaries placed on computing tasks, says Hyun Shin Cho, CEO of Ubitium. “We’re erasing those boundaries. Our Universal Processor does it all – CPU, GPU, DSP, FPGA – in one chip, one architecture. This isn’t an incremental improvement. It is a paradigm shift.”
It does AI as well, according tot the company’s press release.
Previous attempts to combine CPU, DSP, GPU and FPGA functions have resulted in what is known as System on a Chip (SoC). Apple designs and utilizes SoC architecture in its blazingly fast M-Series chips, which devote part of itself to a neural engine. Other SoCs are made by Xilinx, Intel (Stratix 10) and AMD’s Versal ACAP.
Who’s Behind This?
Ubitium’s founder and CTO, Martin Vorbach, holds over 200 patents for semiconductor technology. He is keeping his CTO positions at PACT XPP Technologies and Hyperion-Core, where he is also listed as the founder in his LinkedIn profile. Vorbach studied computer science at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), where he met Hyun Shin Cho.
CEO Hyun Shin Cho has 20 years of experience in various industrial sectors. He studied engineering at KIT and Purdue.
Chairman Peter Weber has worked at Intel, Texas Instruments, and Dialog Semiconductor.
About Ubitium
Ubitium has raised $3.7M in a seed funding round led by Runa Capital, Inflection, and KBC Focus Fund.
The company has offices in Düsseldorf and Rülzheim in Germany.
