RISC-V chipmaker SiFive has announced it will integrate Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion interconnect technology with its future designs.

By adopting the technology, SiFive will become the first RISC-V chipmaker to partner with Nvidia on the interconnect technology, which will allow customers to connect SiFive’s RISC-V CPUs with Nvidia chips.

However, in an interview with Reuters, SiFive CEO Patrick Little said chip designs from the company that support the technology are unlikely to be available before 2027.

First unveiled in May 2025, NVLink Fusion allows partners to build semi-custom AI infrastructure linking non-Nvidia accelerators with Nvidia hardware in rack-scale solutions. In November, the chip giant announced it had secured Arm as a partner for the platform, with the company joining the likes of Fujitsu, Intel, MediaTek, Qualcomm, and Synopsys.

“AI infrastructure is no longer built from generic components; it is co-designed from the ground up,” said Little in comments published alongside the announcement. “By integrating NVLink Fusion with SiFive’s high-performance compute subsystems, we’re enabling customers with an open and customizable CPU platform that pairs seamlessly with Nvidia’s AI Infrastructure to deliver exceptional efficiency at data center scale.”

Founded in California in 2015, SiFive is a fabless chip company that designs chips based on RISC-V, the open architecture that is increasingly seen as a useful alternative to the dominant x86 and Arm ecosystems.

In July 2024, it launched SiFive Performance P870-D, a data center-focused processor for AI workloads. In September of that same year, the company unveiled its XM Series of AI accelerators for high-performance workloads across Edge, IoT, and data center use cases.