Ventana Launches Veyron V2 - A RISC-V Processor and Platform

Ventana Micro Systems Inc. has introduced the second generation of its Veyron family of RISC-V processors. The latest addition, Veyron V2, stands as the most high-performance RISC-V processor currently accessible and is available in chiplet and IP formats.

Balaji Baktha, the Founder and CEO of Ventana, unveiled the specifics of Veyron V2 in his keynote address at the RISC-V Summit North America 2023 held in Santa Clara, California.

“Veyron V2 represents a leap forward in our quest to lead the industry in high-performance RISC-V CPUs that are ready for rapid customer adoption,” said Balaji Baktha, Founder and CEO of Ventana. “It substantiates our commitment to customerinnovation, workload acceleration, and overall optimization to achieve best in class performance per Watt per dollar. V2 enhancements unleash innovation across data center, automotive, 5G, AI, and client applications.”

Key V2 enhancements include:

Significant Increase in Performance and Efficiency

Veyron V2 demonstrates a notable 40% performance improvement achieved through substantial microarchitecture enhancements, an advanced high-performance processor fabric architecture, improved cache hierarchy, and the incorporation of a high-performance vector processor.

Ecosystem: The Rise of RISE

Enhanced support within the RISE ecosystem initiative empowers V2 to swiftly implement open, scalable, and adaptable solutions.

Lower Development Costs and Time to Market

The Veyron V2 chiplet incorporates the industry-leading UCIe chipset interconnect. Similar to its precursor, Veyron V2's chiplet-based solutions offer benefits in unit economics, expediting time to market by up to two years and slashing development costs by up to 75%. Chiplet-based solutions also optimize unit economics by tailoring compute, IO, and memory appropriately. Leveraging composable architectures with chipsets enables companies to concentrate on their innovation and distinctiveness, facilitating workload optimization.

Domain Specific Acceleration

Ventana's Domain Specific Accelerator technology, closely integrated with the Veyron V2 processor pipeline, aims to improve workload efficiency throughout the entire data center infrastructure. Simultaneously, it facilitates customer innovation and differentiation.

“In the dynamically shifting landscape of the tech industry, one truth remains constant: performance per watt per socket per dollar drives innovation across the industry,” said Patrick Moorhead, Founder and Chief Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "Ultimately, that equation needs to make its way to the rack. Ventana's latest V2 offering announcement not only aligns with this principle but could set a new benchmark for high-performance computing.”

Ventana offers a Software Development Kit (SDK) comprising a comprehensive collection of software building blocks that have already demonstrated effectiveness on Ventana's RISC-V platform.

Ventana offers a Software Development Kit (SDK) comprising a comprehensive collection of software building blocks that have already demonstrated effectiveness on Ventana's RISC-V platform.

Veyron V2 Features

• Fifteen wide, aggressive out-of-order pipeline
• 3.6GHz
• 4nm process technology
• 32 cores per cluster
• High core count multi-cluster scalability up to 192 cores
• 128MB of shared L3 cache per cluster
• 512b vector unit
• Ventana AI matrix extensions
• Provided with server-class IOMMU and Advanced Interrupt Architecture (AIA) system IP
• Advanced side channel attack mitigations
• Comprehensive RAS features
• Top-down performance tuning methodology
• SDK released with necessary software already ported to Veyron
• Veyron V2 Development Platform available

Ventana showcased its products at its booth in the main exhibit hall of the RISC-V Summit. Furthermore, Greg Favor, co-founder, CTO, and Chief Architect at Ventana, will present a detailed technical overview of Veyron V2.