RISC-V pioneer SiFive has opened its first office in the UK, and promises that staff there will enjoy “location flexibility” as the company looks to expand its presence and grow the RISC-V ecosystem.

“I have exciting news to share,” Andrew Frame, formerly of Cambridge-based proprietary chip IP giant Arm, wrote in an announcement on LinkedIn. “As the very first UK employee of SiFive I’m pleased to announce that SiFive UK is here and we’re hiring.”

Founded in 2015 by Krste Asanović, Yunsup Lee, and Andrew Waterman, all formerly of the University of California at Berkeley, SiFive has been working aggressively to push commercialised implementations of the free and open-source RISC-V architecture into a variety of markets.

SiFive’s HiFive Unleashed formed the heart of our RISC-V PC build back in 2019, while the HiFive Unmatched, the board’s successor, brought with it a range of improvements – including the company’s high-performance Freedom Unlimited 740 (FU740) 64-bit RISC-V processor.

The company has also worked with Microchip on the RISC-V PolarFire SoC FPGA development platform, launched everything from high-performance to microcontroller-focused cores, and even partnered with the BBC on a Doctor Who-themed educational board.

The UK office joins the company’s existing facilities in Texas, Bouches-du-Rhône, and California where it is headquartered. While Frame has confirmed the company will be hiring for the new office, however, at the time of writing the location was not yet listed on the SiFive vacancies page.