AMD’s Radeon Technology Group is hiring RISC-V engineers for future projects

AMD's Radeon Technology Group (RTG) is looking to expand its team of architects working on embedded RISC-V CPUs by hiring a RISC-V CPU/GPU designer. The development of RISC-V-based solutions is…

By Nivedita Bangari

March 20, 2022

2 min read

Comments

AMD’s Radeon Technology Group (RTG) is looking to expand its team of architects working on embedded RISC-V CPUs by hiring a RISC-V CPU/GPU designer. The development of RISC-V-based solutions is well advanced at AMD, according to a new job advertisement, and the fact that Radeon Technologies Group is hiring specialists could hint at the applications RTG is working on.

The job description outlines AMD’s requirements for its RISC-V micro-architect/RTL designer in general. A professional with experience with high-performance GPUs, RISC-V RV64 CPUs, and CPUs with out-of-order execution, speculative execution, and branch predictors are needed by the company.

AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group in Orlando, Florida, has a team working on integrated RISC-V CPUs, according to the job offer. “Existing and developing graphics/compute paradigms, as well as new APIs leveraging RISC-V processors,” the new candidate is required to know and improve. They’ll also have to monitor CPU workloads and make ideas for improvements, as well as identify bottlenecks and other issues where an embedded CPU can help.

AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group does not appear to produce its CPUs, hence AMD-branded RISC-V CPUs (or licensable RISC-V embedded CPU cores/designs) are unlikely to appear. Modern GPUs could use integrated CPUs for a range of duties, such as handling specific GPU onboard functions, or even more exotic ones, such as running an operating system or performing general-purpose tasks like retrieving data from storage media. RISC-V architectures could also be utilized for other purposes, such as providing a hardware-based root of trust for security.

There’s no saying as to what kind of RISC-V CPU cores AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group is working on at the moment, but we do know that Nvidia’s GPUs use RISC-V microcontrollers to manage some onboard operations.

Because the RISC-V open-source architecture is so well suited to upcoming applications, AMD could be working on something new. Meanwhile, because we’re working with 64-bit RISC-V architecture, we may assume this isn’t a simple microcontroller.