RED Semiconductor today announces that it has become a Silver Member of the OpenPOWER Foundation. RED Semiconductor selected the POWER ISA as a stable, well-supported Instruction Set Architecture platform on which to leverage the order-of-magnitude efficiency gains of its ‘Vector+1’ vectorisation precursor accelerator.

With more than 350 members, including IBM and Google, the OpenPOWER Foundation is democratising access and extending the reach of the RISC-based POWER ISA architecture – one of the most sophisticated processor architectures available – and is driving hundreds of innovations across artificial intelligence, supercomputing, hyperscale and more.

Extending the POWER ISA first developed by IBM, RED Semiconductor is using the Libre-SOC Draft SVP64 implementation of Vector+1 to design its ‘Vantage’ family of new microprocessors which will be marketed globally for high performance computing applications. Vector+1 and the Vantage processor architecture are ideally suited to algorithmically intense computation like FFT, DCT and matrix operations, where its benefits will be reduced binary size, reduced power consumption, and greatly increased result-generating performance.

Libre-SOC supported by RED Semiconductor have this month submitted an RFC (Request for Change) to the OpenPOWER ISA Working Group covering the concept and compatibility of the SVP64 enhanced vector instruction set and we look forward to working together to implement Vector+1.

David Calderwood, co-founder and chairman of RED Semiconductor reported, “Unlike other Open/Libre derived microprocessor initiatives Libre-SOC and RED Semiconductor Ltd. are benefiting from the ISA stability afforded by the coordination of the OpenPOWER Foundation.  This ensures every device with the approved ISA in the market will be code compatible and this in turn will save developers from having to worry about the multiple variants, we are already seeing with other processors, and the maintenance of tool chains going forward.”

About RED Semiconductor

RED Semiconductor’s mission is to develop and deliver a new class of microprocessor chip set optimised for vector instructions that enable complex computational routines to be performed in fewer clock cycles, with smaller binaries, and consuming less power than any existing microprocessor of comparable capability. The company is based in the United Kingdom and was formed in 2021.

About Libre-SOC:

Libre-SOC is an open-source development community in which a global collective of the best microprocessor engineers is developing techniques and implementations to revolutionise microprocessor performance through the use of Cray-style vector instructions. Their objective is to bring supercomputer-class computing to the desktop. www.libre-soc.org

About OpenPOWER Foundation:

The OpenPOWER Foundation is the open steward for the open-source POWER ISA microprocessor architecture. The Foundation has 350+ members across software, hardware, and systems developing advanced microprocessors, servers, networking, storage and GPU-acceleration technology aimed at delivering more choice, control and flexibility to developers of next-generation, cloud, edge, and HPC data centers.