Ascenium

Ascenium is developing a novel class of general-purpose processors aimed at revolutionizing data center computing. The company's flagship product, the Aptos processor, is designed to deliver superior computing performance while significantly reducing power consumption. Aptos utilizes an innovative approach that eliminates both the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and the deep pipeline implementation common in existing processors. Instead, it leverages modern compiler advancements to directly control a simple array of compute elements, providing flexibility and high performance at lower power consumption.

The Aptos processor is based on an array of 128 simple general-purpose 64-bit cores. Ascenium's technology uses a high-performance compiler that parallelizes workloads across its hardware resources, potentially achieving near-maximum theoretical parallelization. This approach aims to address the inefficiencies in current CPU architectures, where approximately 50% of instructions are related to moving data through the pipeline, consuming both processing time and energy. As of July 2021, Ascenium had secured nine patents related to its architecture and software design, with six additional provisional patents filed covering various aspects of the Aptos hardware and software.