Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems Inc., demonstrating its commitment to advancing the RISC-V standard and ecosystem. This strategic move will integrate Ventana's expertise in RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) development into Qualcomm, thereby enhancing its CPU capabilities. The Ventana team will complement Qualcomm's ongoing RISC-V and custom Oryon CPU development, further solidifying Qualcomm's leading position across its business areas in the age of artificial intelligence.

The content of the acquisition

"At Qualcomm, we are committed to shaping the future of intelligent computing. We believe the RISC-V instruction set architecture has the potential to drive CPU technology and thus foster product innovation. The acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems is a key step in our journey to achieving industry-leading RISC-V-based CPU technology and its application across a wide range of products," said Durga Malladi, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Technology Planning, Edge Solutions and Data Center at Qualcomm Technologies.

"We are thrilled to join the Qualcomm team and contribute our RISC-V expertise to the development of Qualcomm's leading Oryon CPU technology," said Balaji Baktha, CEO of Ventana Micro Systems. "This acquisition marks an exciting new chapter for our team, and we look forward to working with the Qualcomm team to push the boundaries of energy-efficient, high-performance next-generation products and experiences."

Aimed at introducing Arm alternatives to the RISC-V architecture

Following its acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems on Wednesday, Qualcomm may soon launch a RISC-V core alongside its custom Arm cores.

Founded in 2018, Ventana has developed several generations of high-performance RISC-V CPU designs, primarily targeting data center and enterprise applications.

The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, but Qualcomm plans to continue developing Ventana's designs while also continuing to develop its custom Arm architecture Oryon cores used in its Snapdragon X-series chips.

"We believe the RISC-V instruction set architecture has the potential to drive CPU technology and thus foster product innovation," said Durga Maladi, Executive Vice President of Technology Planning, Edge Solutions, and Data Center at Qualcomm, in a statement. "The acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems marks a key step in providing industry-leading RISC-V-based CPU technology across all our products."

Qualcomm is no stranger to RISC-V. The company has been researching this instruction set architecture (ISA) for years. This chip giant began using RISC-V microcontrollers in its SoCs as early as 2019 with the Snapdragon 865 chip. In 2023, the company partnered with Google to bring low-power, high-performance RISC-V-based chips to wearable devices.

However, the acquisition of Ventana suggests that Qualcomm may launch even more powerful RISC-V processors in the future. Ventana's Veyron V2 chipset design can accommodate up to 32 RISC-V RVA23-compliant CPU cores with a maximum clock speed of 3.85 GHz, each core equipped with up to 1.5 MB of L2 cache and sharing 128 MB of L3 cache.

Each core is equipped with a 512-bit vector unit based on the RVV 1.0 specification, as well as a custom matrix operation accelerator for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. According to Ventana, this matrix unit has a computing power of 0.5 TOPS (INT8) per core per GHz. For high-performance applications, Ventana's design allows multiple chips to be assembled into a system-in-package (SiP). As previously reported, Ventana's V2 chip was originally planned for production in the second half of 2024. However, the company's website now indicates that the chip is expected to be available in early 2026.

Ventana has also previewed its next-generation Veyron V3 chip design, promising higher clock speeds up to 4.2 GHz and featuring an enhanced matrix math unit supporting FP8 data types.

Qualcomm has not yet revealed when it will release chips based on Ventana's RISC-V IP. In May of this year, the company announced its return to the data center CPU market after a failed attempt in 2018 to launch Arm-based servers.

These products are expected to be based on core technologies acquired by Qualcomm when it acquired Arm CPU supplier Nuvia, which was initially targeted at server applications before its acquisition in 2021.

It's worth noting that this acquisition was not without its challenges. In 2022, Arm sued Qualcomm, accusing it of violating a licensing agreement between Arm and Nuvia. Late last year, a jury ruled in favor of Qualcomm, and in October of the same year, the judge dismissed Arm's appeal.

However, the legal battle between Qualcomm and Arm is far from over. The California-based chip company's countersuit is still ongoing. But at least for now, Qualcomm has a potential alternative should the relationship between the two companies deteriorate further.

Source: Semiconductor Industry Observer

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