Microsemi’s HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board is the result of the company’s collaboration with SiFive. The expansion board broadens the capabilities of SiFive's HiFive Unleashed RISC-V development board, enabling software and firmware engineers to write Linux-based applications targeting a 1GhZ+ RISC-V 64-bit central processing unit (CPU).
Microsemi's HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board allows developers to implement custom peripherals in the PolarFire field programmable gate array (FPGA). They can implement a full-fledged RISC-V personal computer (PC) by enabling standard PCI Express (PCIe) devices, USB and secure digital cards to connect to SiFive's Freedom U540 RISC-V processor.
The HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and HiFive Unleashed allow designers to develop complete Linux applications on a modern RISC-V CPU running at 1 GHz+. This makes the devices suitable for a variety of embedded applications within the communications, industrial, defense, medical and avionics markets, including control plane solutions, imaging/video processing, machine learning, control processing, time-sensitive networking, encryption and root of trust, secure wireless communications and aircraft networking.
Features include a PCIe root complex, serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) port, M.2 SSD port, two USB ports, HDMI, double data rate fourth-generation (DDR4) memory expansion, an embedded multi-media controller (eMMC) managed NAND Flash, and secure digital card slot.
RISC-V is a free and open ISA enabling a new era of processor innovation through open standard collaboration. As the ISA is frozen, software which is written will always run on the RISC-V core, and since the RISC-V IP core is not encrypted, it can be used to ensure trust and certifications not possible with closed architectures. To learn more about RISC-V visit, you guessed it, RISC.
The HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and HiFive Unleashed development board are available for purchase from Crowd Supply. For more information, visit Microsemi.