Chip Startup Efficient Computers Receive Massive Funding, Unveil Architecture 100x Efficient Than Modern Offerings

The chip startup Efficient Computers has received $16 million in funding from the venture capital firm Eclipse as they work towards creating CPU architectures 100 times more efficient than modern ones.

Well, the CPU industry is progressing regarding generational leaps in performance and power efficiencies, but in the later run, this segment is in dire need of innovation, especially when it comes to replacing proprietary CPU architectures; to do this, Efficient Computers has devised a unique solution. They are gaining traction among multiple investors, mainly because of their innovative reconfigurable dataflow processor architecture, known as the Fabric architecture. The new architecture pledges to replace the traditional instruction set architecture (ISA) capabilities; we will describe this later.

This new architecture allows us to target software in a more efficient way.It's a more efficient way of executing programs.

- CEO Brandon Lucia

Efficient Computers has already created a test chip called the "Monza," which they plan on utilizing in industries such as health devices, civil infrastructure monitoring, satellites, defense, and security, mainly because their chip is suited best for low-power applications, even without the need for adding in replacement power, which means that Efficient Computers, as the name suggest, could take the lead in this low-powered segment computing soon, given that their architecture actually turns out as intended. Efficient Computers says that its Fabric architecture is 100x more efficient than micro-controller units (MCUs) and 1000x times more efficient than GPUs, although they haven't mentioned which ones.

Now, moving on to how fabric architecture actually works, the architecture focuses mainly on dataflow, as processing fabric can be reconfigured on the fly to adapt to the specific needs of the workload. This allows for the efficient execution of specialized algorithms or tasks. By eliminating instruction overhead and enabling efficient data flow, the Fabric architecture has the potential to outperform traditional CPUs for specific workloads, as well as provide a much lower power draw compared to existing options.

There's a lot of innovative software (development) that they're doing but they're also able to leverage a lot of the work that has been done in the ecosystem already through open source development projects.

- Eclipse Partner Greg Reichow

Well, low-power CPU solutions have started to gain traction in the industry, and a recent example is the massive adoption of AMD's Phoenix APUs, which are advertised as efficient solutions for the markets. While we aren't sure whether Efficient Computers Fabric architecture would ever make it to the industry, based on how the firm is moving, we will likely see CPUs based on it soon.

News Source: Reuters