NextSilicon Unveils New Processor, Challenges Intel and AMD in Chip Market
- tech360.tv
- 1 hour ago
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NextSilicon, an Israeli startup whose computing chips are being evaluated by U.S. national laboratories, is developing a new central processor. The company hopes this will rival offerings from Intel and AMD, and also compete with systems by Nvidia.
NextSilicon has secured USD 300 million in funding for its operations. Its flagship Maverick-2 chip is designed to accelerate precision scientific computing tasks, such as modelling nuclear weapons.
This field was once dominated by Nvidia, but the company has shifted its focus towards lower-precision computing tasks like artificial intelligence. Startups, including NextSilicon, are now seeking to capitalise on this strategic change by the AI giant.
The new central processing unit complements NextSilicon’s main chip and is entering a market still dominated by Intel and AMD. It uses RISC-V technology. RISC-V is an open computing standard that competes with Arm Ltd, and it is increasingly adopted by chip giants such as Nvidia and Broadcom.
Nvidia frequently pairs its graphics processing units with either its own central processing unit or one from a third party. It has also partnered with companies like Intel to create tighter integration between these two classes of chips.
At present, NextSilicon’s central processing unit remains a test chip. However, its Maverick-2 chips are already in production.
NextSilicon claims its Maverick-2 chips can perform some of the same work as Nvidia chips, but with greater speed and less power consumption. This is achieved without requiring modifications to existing software code.
Sandia National Laboratories has been evaluating prototype systems built with NextSilicon’s chips for three years.
James H. Laros III, senior scientist and Vanguard programme lead at Sandia National Laboratories, commented on the performance. He stated that NextSilicon’s "performance results are impressive, showing real promise for advancing our computational capabilities without the overhead of extensive code modifications."
NextSilicon is developing a new central processor chip.
The startup aims to compete with Intel, AMD, and Nvidia in the processor market.
NextSilicon has raised USD 300 million in funding.
Source: REUTERS