SiFive Accelerates RISC-V Datacenter Adoption with BigSky Development Server

SiFive(opens in new tab) today, at an event coinciding with Hot Chips, will introduce the SiFive BigSky SF-2U870 datacenter development platform. In collaboration with hyperscaler customers and leading ecosystem partners, SiFive has delivered the world’s first enterprise-grade, rackable 2U RISC-V server. The platform will be demonstrated running a variety of server workloads at the event, and is built specifically for customers to accelerate RISC-V datacenter software porting, workload optimization, and system validation. This enables customers, partners and SiFive to accelerate the deployment of production-grade RISC-V solutions for the datacenter.

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Lead customers are currently running workloads on deployed BigSky systems, including hyperscaler, software, and major SoC hardware leaders.

“SiFive is closely collaborating with industry leaders to accelerate deployment of RISC-V in the datacenter. With BigSky, we have delivered a powerful turnkey server platform designed to accelerate development of customer datacenter workloads and software on the RISC-V open standard,” said Patrick Little,(opens in new tab) Chairman and CEO, SiFive. “Ultimately, we are focused on enabling customers to meaningfully optimize the TCO of their custom SoC solutions with SiFive IP. RISC-V in the datacenter isn’t a distant aspiration any more, it is happening right now, and SiFive is leading the way.”

“SiFive’s new development servers mark a major turning point in the industry. The amount of datacenter software they already have up and running clearly demonstrates just how far industry support for RISC-V has come in a remarkably short period of time,” said Patrick Kennedy, President, Axautik Group/ServeTheHome.

Accelerating the Open Ecosystem with Broad Industry Support

Fully compliant with the RVA23 standard, the BigSky SF-2U870 platform eliminates the need for complex custom porting, enabling seamless, out-of-the-box deployment of enterprise software environments.

The platform features out-of-the-box support for standard enterprise-grade Linux releases, such as Canonical Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Red Hat RHEL10.

SiFive is working with NVIDIA to port CUDA to SiFive based RISC-V hardware and integrate NVLink Fusion into future SiFive platforms. Demonstrating this progress, SiFive now has CUDA running on the P870-D-powered BigSky datacenter development platform. By serving as the head node for modern LLM workloads on NVIDIA GPUs, this platform delivers a capability never before seen on RISC-V hardware.

To support this milestone for the RISC-V architecture, industry leaders Canonical and Red Hat offered the following statements:

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“At Canonical, we are committed to driving open-source innovation from developer environments to the datacenter core,” said Gordan Markuš, Director of Silicon Alliances at Canonical. “Out-of-the-box RVA23 support for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on SiFive’s BigSky datacenter development platform provides the enterprise software foundation required to accelerate AI and cloud-native workloads on RISC-V. We are proud to collaborate with SiFive, and this seamless integration ensures our mutual customers can confidently port enterprise workloads and accelerate their transition to RISC-V in the datacenter today.”

“Getting RHEL 10 running on SiFive’s BigSky platform isn’t just a validation exercise, it’s proof that we’re moving from the ‘theoretical’ phase into production-grade reality. For our enterprise customers, the real win here isn’t just performance metrics; it’s the architectural flexibility RISC-V offers without sacrificing the stability and software ecosystem they rely on,” said Brian “Redbeard” Harrington, Strategist, CTO Organization, Red Hat. “Through the RISE project, we’ve been working to ensure that when we say RISC-V is ready for the datacenter, we mean it. We’re excited to be partnering with SiFive to demonstrate that open standards can absolutely deliver the rigorous performance and reliability the modern datacenter demands.”

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