Quintauris: Top 5 Semiconductors Unite for RISC-V

Qualcomm, in collaboration with four prominent European semiconductor companies, proudly announces the formal establishment of Quintauris GmbH, headquartered in Munich, Germany. The company's mission is to drive the global adoption of the RISC-V open standard instruction set architecture, positioning itself as a trailblazer in shaping the future of cutting-edge hardware.

Founded by industry giants Qualcomm, Bosch, Infineon, Nordic, and NXP, Quintauris is strategically positioned to focus initially on automotive hardware development, with ambitious plans for expansion into the mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) sectors in the long run.

Alexander Kocher, a seasoned industry executive with a rich background, assumes the role of CEO at Quintauris. His prior leadership roles include serving as the CEO of German embedded software supplier Elektrobit and heading the automotive division at Wind River, a prominent U.S. embedded systems and cloud software company.

RISC-V, an open standard instruction set architecture boasting over a billion global chip adoptions, is poised for unprecedented growth. Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, predicts an impressive 40% annual increase in RISC-V system chips by 2030, surpassing 16 billion chips. She underscores RISC-V's pivotal role as a technological revolution in our current era.

With current widespread applications in microcontrollers, exemplified by Qualcomm's mobile System-on-Chip (SoC), RISC-V is rapidly permeating diverse sectors, including artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.

Industry pundits posit that Quintauris aims to play a pivotal role in standardizing the RISC-V ecosystem. Presently, the RISC-V software and hardware landscape comprises numerous participants but lacks unified standards. Quintauris' successful establishment, backed by support from five major enterprises, is attributed to the collaborative nature facilitated by the open-source architecture of the RISC-V instruction set.

Beyond Quintauris, other organizations are diligently contributing to advancing RISC-V standardization efforts. The "RISC-V Software Ecosystem" (RISE), backed by RISC-V International, focuses on software development. While Quintauris and RISE share common objectives, their unique areas of emphasis distinguish them, with RISE concentrating on software and Quintauris placing a primary focus on hardware development.

Qualcomm's collaborative initiative underscores its leadership in the semiconductor industry and mirrors the industry's widespread acknowledgment and high expectations for the RISC-V architecture. With the establishment of Quintauris and the increasing involvement of industry players, the RISC-V architecture is poised for extensive adoption and promotion in the years ahead.