
RISC-V’s Open-Source Architecture Shakes Up Chip Design - rch
https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/riscvs-opensource-architecture-shakes-up-chip-design.html
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duskwuff
It's a little early to say that RISC-V has shaken anything up. There are very
few RISC-V parts available, and they are a long way away from being viable
replacements for other commercially available processors.

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nickik
Not really, if you are making a SoC or IoT and you need some core there are
RISC-V core that are competitive to many ARM cores. Look at the product lines
of Andes, SiFive, Greenwave and others.

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duskwuff
I can't speak to the other two, but SiFive's offering -- the FE310 -- is a
toy. 16K of on-chip RAM and no support for external memory is incredibly
limiting -- and the part doesn't appear to be available through commercial
distributors, making it unusable outside the hobbyist market.

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nickik
SiFive offers many chips other then the FE310 as well. Its a new company that
has to bootstrap, Andes and others are existing companies that added lines of
RISC-V processors.

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lsllc
I'm very interested in RISC-V. But show me the hardware! I'll buy one (as long
as it's not prohibitively expensive). I'm looking at FPGAs also, but they are
not really very compelling unless you want to spend ~$3K. So QEMU for now I
guess.

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patrickg_zill
You can get simpler FPGAs on a board that you can easily connect to for under
$100.

e.g. Numato Mimas w/Spartan 6 core
[https://numato.com/product/mimas-v2-spartan-6-fpga-
developme...](https://numato.com/product/mimas-v2-spartan-6-fpga-development-
board-with-ddr-sdram) (with this plus the CPU softcore at j-core.org you can
run Linux)

Adafruit $79.95
[https://www.adafruit.com/product/1553](https://www.adafruit.com/product/1553)
(Spartan6) and $99.95
[https://www.adafruit.com/product/451](https://www.adafruit.com/product/451)
(Altera Cyclone IV)

Many others on eBay etc. But this Reddit thread is likely useful:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/8kwz3q/fpga_boards_fo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/8kwz3q/fpga_boards_for_beginners/)

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lsllc
Thanks for the info -- but are these capable of running Linux on RISC-V in an
FPGA, not just a bare-metal RISC-V?

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gnufx
Does anyone know the state of Shakti, which once had an ETA of 2018 for
"manufacturing"? I couldn't find useful information when I last looked.

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ncmncm
Until it gets popcount and count leading zeros, I can't use it.

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unixhero
Use it for what?

