Ved Shanbhogue Helped Define x86, Now He’s Shaping the Future of RISC-V

After 21 years in a stable role at Intel, Ved Shanbhogue made an unconventional leap. He became an employee at a startup before it had any team or product. 

During his two decades at Intel, Ved worked on the x86 instruction set architecture, helping define technologies that ultimately reached billions of users around the world. “x86 has unmatched reach, but it’s a closed architecture,” he said. “RISC-V is open, and I had a strong sense that it would shape the next generation of computing.”

Ved worked with future Rivos co-founder Belli Kuttanna at Intel, and that relationship helped make the career switch easier. But the real draw for Ved was the chance to build something from the ground up, with more creative freedom and fewer constraints than what he had experienced in a large, established company. 

Today, Ved is part of the architecture team at Rivos, where he helps define the CPU and SoC architecture that will power the company’s chips. His work spans both internal and external responsibilities. Internally, he focuses on system and microarchitecture design for features like RAS, QoS, IOMMU, and networking. Externally, he’s a key contributor to the RISC-V International community, pushing the open standard forward. He serves on the RISC-V Architecture Review Committee and participates in several working groups that define and review ISA extensions. He also contributes to the PCI-SIG and the Ultra Ethernet Consortium.

As one of Rivos’ earliest employees, Ved has found it especially rewarding to see how the team has grown. “We have a diverse set of people from various companies, and it’s valuable to hear their unique insights,” he shared. 

What keeps him excited to come into work each day? The product, the mission, and the people. “We have something amazing in our hands, and it’s up to us to deliver,” he said. “As an engineer, there’s never a shortage of interesting problems to solve.”

Outside of work, Ved enjoys cooking, watching movies, and building DIY home automation projects—from custom doorbells to sprinkler controllers.