Big step in SoC-land?

SiFive Preps RISC-V Cloud Service

“Today it takes 9-18 months to finish a chip. In 12-18 months we will release a system that takes besides the two-month’s fab time, just 15-20 days… today people take 30 days to validate RTL, but we will do it in less than 3-5 hours — this is my promise,” he said.

If it comes to pass, this should allow faster miniaturization in consumer goods, but also possibly lower the bar for medical device products to be reduced in size (and maybe increase in reliability) without massive a cash influx so early in the design process.