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Imagination introduces Catapult RISC-V CPU cores

As expected, Imagination Technologies is giving another try to the CPU IP market with the Catapult RISC-V CPU cores following their previous unsuccessful attempt with the MIPS architecture, notably the Aptiv family. Catapult RISC-V CPUs are/will be available in four distinct families for dynamic microcontrollers, real-time embedded CPUs, high-performance application CPUs, and functionally safe automotive CPUs. The new 32-/64-bit RISC-V cores will be scalable to up to eight asymmetric coherent cores-per cluster, offer a “plethora of customer configurable options”, and support optional custom accelerators. What you won’t see today are block diagrams and detailed technical information about the cores because apparently, all that information is confidential even though some Catapult RISC-V cores are already shipping “in high-performance Imagination automotive GPUs”. The only way to get more details today is to sign an NDA. Having said that we have some more information about the target markets and development tools.  Imagination Capapult […]

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SiFive Performance P650 RISC-V core to outperform Arm Cortex-A77 performance per mm2

About six months have passed since the SiFive announcement of the Performance P550 “fastest 64-bit RISC-V processor” ever, and the company has now introduced an even faster RISC-V core with the Performance P650 that’s expected to match Cortex-A77 performance. Building upon the Performance P550 design, the SiFive Performance P650 is scalable to sixteen cores using a coherent multicore complex, and delivers a 40% performance increase per clock cycle based on SiFive engineering estimated performance in SPECInt2006/GHz, thanks to an expansion of the processor’s instruction-issue width. The company compares P650 to the Arm family by saying it “maintains a significant performance-per-area advantage compared to the Arm Cortex-A77”. SiFive Performance P650 key features: 64-bit RISC-V (RV64GCB) core Sv39/Sv48 Virtual Memory Support Multi-core, multi-cluster processor configurations with up to 16 cores Performance > 11 SpecINT2006/GHz Thirteen stage, four-issue, out-of-order pipeline tuned for scalable performance Private L2 Caches and Streaming Prefetcher for improved memory […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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VisionFive V1 RISC-V Linux SBC resurrects BeagleV StarFive single board computer

Last summer we reported that BeagleV StarFive RISC-V SBC would not be manufactured, but all was not lost as StarFive would collaborate with Radxa to make a new single board computer based on their JH7100 dual-core 64-bit RISC-V processor. But thanks to a report on Heise and extra photos acquired by CNX Software, we now have more details about the board that mostly comes with the same features as the BeagleV StarFive, but a completely different layout that brings all the main ports to one side of the board. VisionFive V1 specifications: SoC – StarFive JH7100 Vision SoC with: Dual-core Sifive U74 RISC-V processor @ 1.5 GHz with 2MB L2 cache Vision DSP Tensilica-VP6 for computing vision NVDLA Engine 1 core (configuration 2048 MACs @ 800MHz  – 3.5 TOPS) Neural Network Engine (1024MACs @ 500MHz – 1 TOPS) VPU – H.264/H.265 decoder up to 4Kp60, dual-stream decoding up to 4Kp30 […]

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Sipeed LicheeRV – A $16.90 Allwinner D1 Linux RISC-V board

Finally! There’s now a much more affordable Allwinner D1 RISC-V Linux board thanks to Sipeed LicheeRV Nezha CM SBC sold for $16.90 and up on Aliexpress, that’s much cheaper than the $100 asked for Nezha SBC, although still not incredibly cheap as we’ll see from the specifications below. Sipeed LicheeRV is actually both a board and a system-on-on-module with an edge connector, and is equipped with 512MB DDR3, a USB-C OTG port, a MicroSD card socket, and an SPI display interface. The dual M.2 edge connector can be plugged into a carrier board, and they will be a “86 Box” (86x86mm) for HMI display that can be used for home automation. Sipeed Lichee RV specifications: SoC – Allwinner D1 single-core XuanTie C906 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 1.0 GHz with HiFi4 DSP, G2D 2D graphics accelerators Memory – 512MB DDR3 memory @ 792 MHz Storage – MicroSD card slot Video – […]

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Renesas RH850/U2B automotive SoC features RISC-V-based parallel co-processor

Renesas Electronics RH850/U2B is an automotive SoC designed for electronic control unit (ECU) with used for hybrid ICE and xEV traction inverter, high-end zone control, connected gateways, and vehicle motion applications. The processor includes up to eight 400MHz RH850 32-bit RISC performance cores with four of them in lockstep architecture for ASIL-D and ASIL-B compliance, as well as DR1000C RISC-V-based parallel co-processor (data flow processor) with vector extension (DFP) from NSITEXE designed to support “the fast execution of complex mathematical algorithms”. Renesas RH850/U2B key features & specifications: CPU cores – 400MHz speed for up to 8+4 (LockStep) RH850 G4MH CPUs Memory – Up to 5.1MB RAM on-chip Storage Up to 32MB Flash on-chip SFMA (Serial flash memory interface), eMMC interfaces for external storage Co-Processor – DR1000C RISC-V based MIMD high-performance embedded vector processor Embedded EMU3S (Embedded motor control unit), RDC3X (Position sensor interface), TSG3 (motor timer) for field-oriented traction motor […]

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Giveaway Week – Bluetrum AB32VG1 RISC-V board

The next prize for our once-in-a-year giveaway week is Bluetrum AB32VG1 RISC-V development board based on Bluetrum AB5301A MCU. The board is designed for Bluetooth audio applications as well as general-purpose applications and comes with Arduino headers for expansion. A USB Type-C cable is also included for power and programming. I tested the RISC-V board with RT-Thread open-source operating systems, and let’s say it was quite challenging because development tools need to be improved, but RT-Thread developers are committed to providing a better experience to developers. What’s important is that in the end, after some efforts, I managed to blink an LED and play some music through a pair of speakers connected to the 3.5mm audio jack, and the USB port for power. At the time of review, there was no Bluetooth sample, and a quick look at the documentation shows it may not be available just yet. If you’d […]

AAEON Intel Arc
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Linux 5.15 LTS release – Main Changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.15, an LTS version, this past Sunday: It’s been calm, and I have no excuse to add an extra rc, so here we are, with v5.15 pushed out, and the merge window starting tomorrow. Which is going to be a bit inconvenient for me, since I also have some conference travel coming up. But it’s only a couple of days and I’ll have my laptop with me. Sometimes the release timing works out, and sometimes it doesn’t.. Anyway, the last week of 5.15 was mainly networking and gpu fixes, with some random sprinkling of other things (a few btrfs reverts, some kvm updates, minor other fixes here and there – a few architecture fixes, couple of tracing, small driver fixes etc). Full shortlog appended. This release may have started out with some -Werror pain, but it calmed down fairly quickly and on the whole 5.15 was […]

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Build an open source-hardware Allwinner D1s RISC-V Linux SBC for under $10

We covered Allwinner D1s RISC-V processor with 64MB built-in RAM a few days ago, and we’ve just found out about Xassette-Asterisk, an open-source hardware board based on the processor that runs Linux (OpenWrt) and is said to cost less than $10 to make. This is significantly cheaper than the Allwinner D1 based Nezha RISC-V Linux SBC currently sold for a little over $100, a rather poor value. The cheaper board will not quite have the same applications with just 64 MB RAM and no HDMI, but it could be great for projects requiring a camera and/or a display, audio interfaces, plus some I/Os. Xassette-Asterisk specifications: SoC – Allwinner D1s single-core 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 1.008 GHz with 64MB DDR2 Storage – MicroSD card slot, 32 MBit SPI flash (W25Q32 – U2 on the board) Display I/F – 40-pin LCD connector, 6-pin touch panel interface, backlight power Camera I/F – 24-pin […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC