From Hype to Hardware: Flow’s Take on IEEE Spectrum’s up to 100x CPU Headline

News – 06/06/25

Nine months ago, IEEE Spectrum published a bold headline:

“Startup Says It Can Make a 100x Faster CPU.”

They were talking about us.

Today, we’re thrilled to share what’s happened since then, because Flow has moved from vision to execution.

The PPU Is no longer just an concept

When the article was published, our Parallel Processing Unit (PPU) architecture had already demonstrated major promise through FPGA prototypes and simulation. Now, we've taken key steps forward.

And recently, we achieved a critical milestone, which marks the successful execution of full end-to-end CPU operation: compiling high-level programs into RISC-V binaries and executing them in our gem5-based simulation modeling PPU integrated into the RISC-V CPU system. This demonstrates the readiness of our technology for real-world deployment.

And we’re doing this with a radically simplified, efficient design built specifically for general-purpose parallel processing.

From prototype to productization

Flow isn’t building chips. We’re enabling the future of CPUs through licensable IP. Our PPU is designed to be integrated with any existing CPU architectures (Arm, x86, RISC-V or Power) to unlock extreme performance scaling.

Discussions are underway with CPU vendors, hyperscalers, and custom chip companies who are seeking performance breakthroughs beyond today’s incremental advances.

The bigger picture

The need for energy-efficient, high-performance computing is only growing, and traditional approaches aren’t keeping up. We believe it’s time to rethink what a CPU can do, and Flow’s PPU architecture brings the missing ingredient to the modern stack: true, scalable parallelism.

This isn’t a sidecar accelerator. It’s a foundational shift in how we design processors.

What's next?

We’re continuing to scale our technology, grow our team, and engage with early partners across industries. Whether it’s for cloud, AI, scientific workloads, or next-gen computing platforms. Flow is ready to power the future of performance.

Let’s stop thinking sequentially.

Let’s start thinking in parallel.

- Team Flow

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