SiFive launches Premier P550 RISC-V development board

RISC-V chip developer SiFive is shipping a development board based on its P550 core.

The Premier P550 board marks a fundamental shift in the RISC-V board strategy by the company with a new partnership programme.

The Premier P550 uses a quad core 1.4GHz RISC-V chip from Chinese supplier Eswin which also includes a GPY from Imagination Technologies in the UK and an Eswin neural processing unit (NPU).

The board already runs Yocto Linux, and version 24.04 of Ubuntu Linux that supports the GPU and NPU will be available later in the year. A hundred versions of the board with Yocto, called the “Early Access Edition,” is available for purchase through Arrow Electronics.

“Since announcing the HiFive Premier P550 boards in April, we’ve worked closely with Canonical to deliver a best-in-class hardware and software experience,” said Martyn Stroeve, Head of the HiFive board program at SiFive. “We know many developers are eager to get their hands on this powerful new board, so we decided to release a limited Early Access Edition. At the same time, we are finalizing the software stack for the December release, which we believe will deliver powerful performance and usability for developers. We’re excited to see the innovation and creativity that will come from this.”

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“We are excited to see ESWIN’s high-performance EIC7700X SoC powering the HiFive Premier P550, enabling developers to fully realize the advantages of RISC-V. We look forward to our continued partnership with SiFive in bringing this board to market and driving innovation in RISC-V design,” said Bo Wang, Vice Chairman of ESWIN Computing.

SiFive has launched its own development board every two years, but now wants to accelerate the launches through a partnership programme and approved board scheme.

“To meet this need, we are creating a new series of HiFive boards offering varying performance levels, capabilities like scalar and vector compute, and at different price points,” said Stroeve. “We’re excited to announce our new HiFive Partner strategy and HiFive Approved program, which will help scale our offerings and bring more silicon solutions to market, in collaboration with our ecosystem partners. This builds on our broad product portfolio, and with over 400 design wins we’re positioned to bring customers the best RISC-V platforms across more applications and markets.”

There will be a limited number of boards developed with partners with the HiFive brand alongside an ‘approved’ programme with boards from other developers.

The HiFive Premier P550 board has 16-32GB LPDDR5 / 128GB eMMC and SATA, PCIe, SD, M.2, USB 3 connectivity.