We at the moment are studying new particulars on the fruits of the partnership between SiFive and Intel. The 2 corporations have introduced that the HiFive Professional P550 growth board is on observe for launch in the course of the summer season of 2023.
HiFive Professional P550 is powered by a “Horse Creek” SoC, which is a quad-core, 64-bit RISC-V design. The SoC options personal L2 reminiscence, with 128KB allotted to every core, whereas a complete of 2MB L3 cache is shared amongst all 4 cores. The SoC operates in extra of 2GHz, in accordance with Intel. One other vital factor to recollect is that the Professional 550 is constructed by Intel Foundry Providers on the Intel 4 course of (aka 7nm in conventional course of node parlance).
“After we first checked out this chance with RISC-V, our first thought was: Let’s put ourselves within the footwear of the developer. What do they should develop software program?” mentioned Nikhil Krishna Gopalakrishna, Principal Engineer at Intel. “The core is improbable, now let’s carry collectively a very powerful peripherals round it to allow good ecosystem growth.”
As for the board itself, it incorporates a microATX type issue (244mm x 244mm) and 16GB of onboard DDR5-5600 reminiscence. Additionally included are two PCIe 5.0 growth slots, built-in graphics, 10 GbE, and eight USB ports (two USB 2.0 and 6 USB 3.0). There are additionally two M.2 growth slots (2230 and 2280).
“That is going to push RISC-V software program growth to new ranges, new heights,” added Sam Grove, Direct of Product Administration at SiFive. “That is actually for individuals constructing software program, packaging software program and distributing software program to the remainder of the ecosystem.”
Relating to utilization instances, Intel envisions the HiFive Professional P550 growth board concentrating on premium software program growth, developer desktops, and RISC-V rack techniques. Nonetheless, provided that the HiFive Professional P550 is aimed on the developer neighborhood, there isn’t a phrase on pricing for on a regular basis customers trying to get their fingers on it.
We should always word that Intel tried to accumulate SiFive in 2021, however the two corporations could not agree on monetary phrases (a reported $2 billion) or how the latter could be built-in into the previous. However, Intel has been on the lookout for methods to department out past the normal x86 structure utilized in its CPUs, and RISC-V has loads of potential in low-power purposes.
Trying ahead, SiFive’s next-generation RISC-V merchandise embrace the P670 and its low-power companion chip, the P470, aimed toward “next-generation wearables and sensible client units.” The P670 will probably be constructed on a 5nm course of node and can function clock speeds of three.4GHz+.