SiFive expects to earn $240 million to $280 million in licensing revenue and new lifetime contracts in 2024, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. The revelation may indicate that the company is on track to sign another major contract with Google to supply processor core designs for its tensor processing units (TPUs), believes The Register.
Bloomberg indicates that IP provider SiFive pins a lot of hope on a 'second-generation chip for artificial intelligence servers' without elaborating, but this could be a major revenue driver for the company. Although SiFive can license its RISC-V cores to virtually everyone, The Register speculates that the IP developer is set to license its X390 core to Google, which is poised to use it for its next-generation TPU.
Google's current-generation TPU already uses SiFive's X280 general-purpose core to feed data to Google's matrix multiplication units or, as SiFive puts it, accelerate the accelerator. SiFive's X390 general-purpose core is tailored for AI and machine learning workloads. Neither SiFive nor Google have confirmed the rumor. Meanwhile, a significant reason to expect the cloud and search giant to keep using SiFive cores in its next-generation AI system-on-chips is to maintain backward compatibility with existing AI SoCs.
Given that the RISC-V instruction set architecture is gaining traction in datacenters, it is possible that SiFive may license its cores to other developers of AI and/or edge AI accelerators, so it is not cast in stone that Google is poised to license SiFive's technology.
In 2023, SiFive reported revenue of $38.2 million, primarily from licensing and royalty deals. Despite signing $186 million in lifetime deals, the company lost a lot of money last year due to its relatively high operating expenses of $148.9 million.
For 2024, SiFive has set ambitious revenue targets. It expects to earn $16 million in the first quarter, $43 million in the second, $103 million in the third, and $79 million in the fourth. This projected revenue includes lifetime royalties and licensing fees. The company's total future revenue from royalty contracts secured by the end of 2023 amounts to $233 million.
