Qualcomm takes RISC on Arm alternative with Ventana acquisition

Qualcomm could soon be serving up RISC-V cores alongside its custom Arm ones following the acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems on Wednesday.

Founded in 2018, Ventana has developed several generations of high-performance RISC-V-based CPU designs aimed at datacenter and enterprise applications.

The terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed, but Qualcomm intends to continue the development of Ventana's designs in parallel with the custom Arm-based Oryon cores used in its Snapdragon X-series of chips.

"We believe the RISC-V instruction set architecture has the potential to advance the frontier on CPU technology, enabling innovation across products," Durga Malladi, executive VP of technology planning, edge solutions and datacenter at Qualcomm, said in a canned statement. "The acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems marks a pivotal step in our journey to deliver industry-leading RISC-V based CPU technology across products."

Qualcomm is no stranger to RISC-V. The company has been toying with the instruction ...