Nuvia, a startup looking to challenge the likes of Intel and AMD in datacentre processors, emerges from stealth following the announcement of a successful first investment round worth around $53 million.

Founded in 2019, Nuvia is the brainchild of John Bruno, Gerard Williams III and Manu Gulati, three industry veterans with experience at AMD, Apple, Arm, Broadcom and Google. Together, the three count 100 patents in the development of 20 chips at their respective companies. As such the startup can count on a rich experience in silicon design, and the founders claim they will bring "industry-leading performance and energy efficiency for the datacentre." And just as well, since Williams was chief architect on all Apple CPU designs, including the recent Lightning core in the A13.

“The world is creating more data than it can process as we become increasingly dependent on high-speed information access, always-on rich media experiences and ubiquitous connectivity,” Williams says. “A step-function increase in compute performance and power efficiency is needed to feed these growing user needs. The timing couldn’t be better to create a new model for high-performance silicon design with the support of a world-class group of investors.”

Little is known as to what Nuvia is working on at the moment. One can guess it will count on previous experience to build a server SoC with a custom CPU microarchitecture, one possibly based on Arm designs. Industry hearsay suggests the company will take at least three years before launching an actual product, but it will be worth following what that final product will be.

Go Nuvia