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New RISC-V processors address demand for open source and performance
Nov. 21, 2023 –
By Nitin Dahad, embedded.com (November 8, 2023)
Annual RISC-V Summit sees launch of new processors from Synopsys and Ventana, shows traction among key companies like Qualcomm, and new OpenHW Group processor testing platform.
This year’s annual RISC-V Summit taking place this week in Santa Clara seemed to have a definite buzz around it. What’s apparent is if you were wondering if the architecture had traction, there were proof points that would certainly change your mind.
RISC-V processor IP Cores
First there were plenty of announcements, including from Synopsys with a RISC-V version of the ARC processor, the ARC-V; Ventana Micro Systems with its Veyron V2 high performance processor as well as its partnership with Imagination Technologies for a CPU-GPU system on chip solution; BeagleBoard with its new single-board computer (SBC) based on Microchip’s PolarFire RISC-V SoC with FPGA fabric; and OpenHW Group announcing its CORE-V CVA6 platform project, an open-source FPGA-based software development and testing environment for RISC-V processors.
And then there were the presentations that provided evidence of some of the work the larger firms have been doing with RISC-V technology. For example, Qualcomm, who last month announced a collaboration with Google on wearables to develop a RISC-V Snapdragon Wear platform for next generation Wear OS solutions, said it had shipped more than 1 billion devices using RISC-V in 2023. The company said its first SoC utilizing a RISC-V microcontroller was in Snapdragon 865 in 2019, which was a result of its quest for an MCU that it could customize with a smaller footprint unique to its needs.