Samsung designs risc-v CPU for Internet of Things

Samsung is said to have started designing its own CPU core at the beginning of this year. The Korean company would focus on applications for the Internet of Things with the CPU and the chip would be based on the risc-v architecture.

The risc-v computing core would be integrated into a 32-bit microcontroller and would be suitable for wearables due to its limited size and low consumption. According to ETNews, it is a chip with 10,000 to 20,000 transistors, similar to the Cortex-M0, which is based on the ARM architecture.

Risc-v is an open source isa that originated at the Computer Science Division of the University of California. The aim of the project, which was started in 2010, is to make CPU designs freely available under a bsd license. Other chip designs based on the reduced instruction set computing principles, such as arm and mips, are licensed for a fee.

The first iot products with the Samsung core should appear next year. Samsung previously designed the M1 core of the Exynos 8 Octa 8890, the soc of the Galaxy S7.