Intel responded to ending the RISC-V Pathfinder program: a small team project that is still committed to supporting RISC-V

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen goodfull for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, January 30 (Xinhua)-- Intel unsurprisingly announced new cost-cutting measures, including not investing in new products in its network switch business, and ending its RISC-V Pathfinder program, with a "catastrophic" net loss of $664 million, down 114% year-on-year, and almost its largest quarterly loss in history.

Intel ended the RISC-V Pathfinder program somewhat unexpectedly, with no public statement other than suddenly notifying participants that the company had stopped the program. Visit Intel's Pathfinder website to find the above notice: "Intel is stopping Intel RISC-V 's Pathfinder program, effective immediately." Intel's website also warns: "since Intel will not provide any additional versions or bug fixes, we encourage you to transition to the third-party RISC-V software tools that best meet your development needs."

The Intel RISC-V Pathfinder program, which creates a unified development environment for industrial users and amateurs, began in August 2022 to help accelerate the development of RISC-V chips by using an industry-standard tool chain of unified integrated development environment (IDE). These tools allow users to build RISC-V chips and run them on FPGA, a program supported by many large RISC-V companies.

In response to the move, Intel representatives responded that the decision to terminate RISC-V 's Intel Pathfinder program had no impact on Intel contract Manufacturing Services (IFS) and RISC-V development platform "Horse Creek". The company remains committed to supporting chips in all three major instruction sets-X86, Arm and RISC-V. The representative also said that Pathfinder was an "innovative project" of a small team of Intel, but it did not disclose the number of employees of the project.

CTOnews.com learned that Intel has many other ongoing RISC-V programs. Intel and SiFive jointly released the HiFive Pro P550 RISC-V development board three days ago and plan to launch it this summer. The board is driven by Horse Creek processors manufactured by Intel OEM Services on the Intel 4 process. Intel has also invested in a $426 million laboratory with the Barcelona supercomputing center (BSC) to develop RISC-V processors for future zettascale-class supercomputers, AI accelerators, self-driving cars and high-performance computing. Intel has even created a $1 billion fund to help the company develop a variety of chips that will be manufactured in its IFS contract factory, including x86, Arm and RISC-V designs.