RISC-V Enables a System on a Chip

We live in a time of unprecedented growth of enterprise data, and much of this data is in motion. To help businesses activate ever-increasing volumes of information—particularly at the edge where timely insights tend to be most valuable—Seagate engineers designed two RISC-V-enabled processors for silicon chips.

One of the cores, designed for high performance, has already been built with RISC-V-enabled silicon and demonstrated as functional in hard disk drives (HDDs). The other processor, which is an area-optimized core for lightweight and security-critical applications, is currently being built.

The new microprocessor designs will allow devices to share a common RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). With the introduction of RISC-V to storage devices, application-specific computational capabilities such as scientific simulation and the model training aspect of machine learning can be implemented. Another benefit: the use of open security architectures makes possible a more secure movement of data.

The RISC-V-enabled cores will have huge implications for numerous and varied workloads at the edge. It was thanks to the simplicity and openness of RISC-V that Seagate was able to quickly create a proof-of-concept design and evolve it into the development of these cores. This project would not have been possible within the barriers of traditional ISAs.