Nuvia is designing a data centre processor chip that it said will be faster and more power-efficient than those currently on the market. Its solution will compete with the likes of Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. In doing this it is using tech from SoftBank Group Corp’s Arm Ltd, while exploring opensource alternatives.
The company was established last year and raised $53 million in its series A round from Capricorn Investment Group, Dell Technologies Capital (DTC), Mayfield, and WRVI Capital, with participation from Nepenthe LLC. It expects its first chips to reach customers by 2022.
Nuvia was founded by former Google system architect John Bruno, Manu Gulati, the former lead SoC architect for consumer hardware at Google, and Gerard Williams III, Apple’s senior director and chief CPU Architect for nearly a decade.
Commenting on Nuvia’s technology, Williams disclosed that the new chips would continue to use Arm’s technology, despite the company being sold to Nvidia for $40 billion.
However, the start-up is also evaluating its alternative options including as RISC-V, an open-source rival to Arm.
Williams said: “Like any prudent company out there, we’re always exploring other architectures.” He said RISC-V has “what I would call some growing up to do yet, but it’s something to definitely pay attention to.”
Mithril Capital is a global VC firm founded by Thiel and Ajay Royan
Thiel, a German-American VC, was an early investor in Facebook and co-founded Palantir and PayPal. Although he sold his Facebook shares, he still sits on the company’s board and Facebook is one of the world’s biggest buyers of data centre chips, according to Reuters.
