RISC-V Revolution Ignited: Tech Giants Launch Quintauris

Recently, Qualcomm announced the establishment of Quintauris in collaboration with Bosch, Infineon, Nordic Semiconductor, and NXP Semiconductors, with its headquarters located in Munich, Germany.

Having received all necessary regulatory approvals, the new company aims to bolster the global development of the RISC-V architecture by supporting the next generation of hardware development. This initiative seeks to expedite commercialization while reducing fragmentation. Quintauris initially plans to focus on the automotive industry before expanding into mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

RISC-V, an open standard instruction set architecture, is freely available under an open-source license. Its basic instruction set features 32-bit fixed-length naturally aligned instructions and supports variable-length extensions. It is now employed in various applications, from small embedded systems to large-scale rack-mounted parallel computers. Companies can use RISC-V technology to create their processors, circumventing the closed ecosystems of Arm, AMD, and Intel. Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, revealed at a RISC-V summit that the architecture is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40% over the next few years, with over 16 billion RISC-V chips anticipated by 2030.

It is noteworthy that Bosch, Infineon, and NXP Semiconductors, all part of Quintauris, jointly invested with TSMC in August this year in the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC) in Dresden, Germany. This venture aims to provide advanced semiconductor manufacturing services, with each company holding a 10% stake. Qualcomm had previously attempted to acquire NXP Semiconductors in 2016, though the acquisition was not successful. Nordic Semiconductor, perhaps less familiar to some, specializes in producing key wireless chips with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities.