InspireSemi Unveils Thunderbird: A Game-Changing 'Supercomputer-on-a-Chip' with RISC-V Architecture

InspireSemi Unveils Thunderbird: A Game-Changing 'Supercomputer-on-a-Chip' with RISC-V Architecture
Image credit: Inspire Semiconductor Website 

InspireSemi is making a significant bet on its new "supercomputer-on-a-chip" product, Thunderbird. The company asserts that by utilizing open-source RISC-V architecture and software compatibility, their PCI add-in card becomes more affordable, accessible, and efficient than those of their competitors.

The Austin-based semiconductor company announced the completion of its first Thunderbird chip, which features 1,536 64-bit superscalar RISC-V CPU cores. Up to four chips can be installed on a single accelerator card, similar in size to a GPU, resulting in a total of 6,144 cores per card. This setup can scale further with multiple processors connected via high-speed serial interconnects.

This impressive processing power is targeted at critical high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. Thunderbird supports standard CPU programming models, enabling existing HPC workloads to run with minimal to no code modifications. As a PCI add-on card, Thunderbird is compatible with existing server infrastructures, allowing companies to integrate it without substantial new investments in infrastructure.

Image credit: Inspire Semiconductor Website 

InspireSemi's founder and CTO, Andy Gray, emphasized the versatility of Thunderbird's open-source design and agnostic software. "Thunderbird accelerates many critical applications in industries that other approaches do not, including life sciences, genomics, medical devices, climate change research, and applications that require deep simulation and modeling," he said.

Thunderbird is designed to leverage the power efficiency of RISC-based architecture. InspireSemi claims a 30-60% improvement in power efficiency compared to similar solutions, offering up to 24 FP64 TFLOPS at 50 GFLOPS/W (480W). Compared to Nvidia's Ampere A100, which delivers 19.5 FP64 TFLOPS, Thunderbird's pricing is expected to start at $6,500, presenting a promising alternative.

The adoption of open-source solutions is accelerating. The Unified Acceleration Foundation (UXL), with major contributions from Intel's oneAPI framework, aims to establish universal standards for vendor-agnostic hardware and software.

As open-source initiatives gain momentum, companies like InspireSemi could see a bright future in the industry.