Semidynamics’ NPU

Very dense AI compute in RISC-V.

August 27, 2025

Jon Peddie

Semidynamics has developed a fully programmable RISC-V tensor unit that processes matrix operations required by AI applications. Built on the company’s existing Vector Unit, it leverages vector registers to store matrices, allowing the units to work in a coordinated fashion. This design allows the Tensor Unit to handle matrix multiplication, while the Vector Unit processes activation functions. Semidynamics reports this combined architecture increases performance by 128 times over a scalar core alone. The unit simplifies programming by integrating into the cache-coherent subsystem. Semidynamics emerged in 2016 in Santa Clara, California, and has developed what the company describes as a completely

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Semidynamics’ NPU

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