Intel recently quietly discontinued its Intel Pathfinder for RISC-V program. This writes The Register. The program launched last year was supposed to promote the use of open-source RISC-V chip designs.
According to the tech website, the program website of the chip giant’s Pathfinder for RISC-V shows the announcement that the program has ended. In doing so, Intel indicates that it will no longer provide bug fixes and that interested parties should use other parties’ RISC-V software tools.
Causes of program termination
The Register gives as a possible cause for the program’s discontinuation that the chip giant could no longer or did not want to fund the development of this particular program. Intel itself did not comment on the discontinuation of its own RISC-V program.
The chip giant’s move is especially noteworthy given that the company is a sizable investor in the special designer of RISC-V-based CPUs SiFive. The company also participates in RISC-V International.
In addition, Intel has indicated in a recent risk analysis that it sees companies designing Arm and RISC-V-based chip designs as serious competitors. Especially for processors targeting data center workloads.
Pathfinder for RISC-V recently launched
The chip giant had recently launched its Pathfinder for RISC-V program in August 2022. This program would allow users to run RISC-V CPU designs on Intel FPGAs or virtual simulators. This would allow them to develop use cases before the development lifecycle for these CPUs would be launched.
Just last December, updates to this program were announced. Among other things, these updates were to provide a better collaborative ecosystem.
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