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Title: Top Researchers Leave Intel To Build Startup With 'The Biggest,
Baddest CPU'

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/06/2059...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from OregonLive: Together, the four
founders of Beaverton startup AheadComputing spent nearly a century at Intel.
They were among Intel's top chip architects, working years in advance to
develop new generations of microprocessors to power the computers of the
future. Now they're on their own, flying without a net, building a new class
of microprocessor on an entirely different architecture from Intel's. Founded
a year ago, AheadComputing is trying to prove there's a better way to design
computer chips. "AheadComputing is doing the biggest, baddest CPU in the
world," said Debbie Marr, the company's CEO. [...] AheadComputing is betting
on an open architecture called RISC-V -- RISC stands for "reduced instruction
set computer." The idea is to craft a streamlined microprocessor that works
more efficiently by doing fewer things, and doing them better than
conventional processors. For AheadComputing's founders and 80 employees, many
of them also Intel alumni, it's a major break from the kind of work they've
been doing all their careers. They've left a company with more than 100,000
workers to start a business with fewer than 100. "Every person in this room,"
Marr said, looking across a conference table at her colleagues, "we could
have stayed at Intel. We could have continued to do very exciting things at
Intel." They decided they had a better chance at leading a revolution in
semiconductor technology at a startup than at a big, established company like
Intel. And AheadComputing could be at the forefront of renewal in Oregon's
semiconductor ecosystem. "We see this opportunity, this light," Marr said.
"We took our chances." It'll be years before AheadComputing's designs are on
the market, but the company "envisions its chips will someday power PCs,
laptops and data centers," reports OregonLive. "Possible clients could
include Google, Amazon, Samsung or other large computing companies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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