RISC-V innovator Greenwaves Technologies raises €20M to scale production of GAP9 processor
GreenWaves Technologies, a company that designs ultra-low-power RISC-V processors, has received 20 million euros in funding. The funding will accelerate the production of its flagship processor chip for hearable devices. The company intends to use these funds to invest in research and development for its next-generation processor with improved features that include extended battery life and programmability tailored for the automotive industry.
The funding round was led by Innovacom and joined by Thales, Definvest and the French Tech Seed Fun. Other investors who participated included Soitec and Zepp Health. Greenwaves says there is a substantial market demand for the GAP9, as it features neural network-based noise filtering and adaptive transparency technologies.
“We are delighted about the rate of customers’ adoption of GAP9, with a dozen design wins in hearables and IoT. Hearables are on their way to surpassing smartphones in innovation and volume,” said Loic Lietar, the CEO of GreenWaves Technologies. “In IoT applications, we serve the most demanding low-power smart camera use cases, where GAP9 shines.”
GreenWaves Technologies designed the GAP9 processor to significantly improve its processing power and efficiency compared to its predecessor, GAP8. The GAP9 offers 150.8 GOPS of processing power with a power efficiency of 0.33mW/GOP. It is a part of the company’s embedded audio processor lineup, capable of delivering low latency and active noise cancellation for hearable devices.
The GAP9 processor is equipped with ten cores using the RISC-V instruction set architecture and can add custom instructions using the GAP toolchain. This processor allows multi-sensor analysis for battery-powered smart security systems and smart building sensors, including vision and sound.
“We are proud to have accompanied GreenWaves Technologies, a pioneer in the edge processor industry at a turning point in its recent history, and to have helped it demonstrate the potential of its products and technology,” said Vincent Deltrieu, a partner and member of the management board of Innovacom. “We are now particularly pleased to lead this financing round and support the company in a new, very exciting growth stage.”
Article Topics
chip | edge AI | Greenwaves Technologies | RISC-V | startup | venture capital
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