{Hardware} based mostly on the open-source RISC-V structure retains coming, with the most recent Chinese language vendor going by the title LeapFive, as noticed within the pages of CNX Software program (opens in new tab). Its NB2 processor comes with 4 cores and runs at a speedy 1.8GHz. It additionally comes with a GPU, making a Linux desktop a definite risk.
For now that is only a chip slightly than a totally fledged SBC or something to hassle the Raspberry Pi (opens in new tab) hegemony, however we will guess on the options of such a hypothetical board by wanting on the options the chip helps.
You might get 4GB of RAM, some built-in eMMC flash, and a Micro SD card slot. It might have two Ethernet sockets, each gigabit, a smattering of USB ports because of its 2.0 and three.2 hosts, and three.5mm audio because of the presence of a DAC. A UART connector offers RS232 and RS485 for serial functions, and there is I2C, PWM, GPIO, plus a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi module too. Video output seems to be by means of MIPI DSI 2.0 and LVDS, with out frequent connections corresponding to HDMI, which may very well be a barrier to producing a consumer-grade board.
Together with the GPU, which runs at 850MHz however in any other case hasn’t been revealed intimately, the chip has NPU (4 TOPS) and DSP co-processors, together with a VPU for encoding and decoding 4Kp60 H.264/H.265. The CPU cores ship 2.5 DMIPS/MHz, which as CNX Software program notes is similar as SiFive’s U74-MC 64-bit RISC cores that put out related efficiency to Arm’s Cortex A55 designs. The presence of the SiFive Protect safety platform is one other trace that there could be one thing much like SiFive (opens in new tab)’s chip there.
In a press launch (opens in new tab) to accompany the launch, Dr Aglaia Kong, CEO and CTO of LeapFive Expertise (pictured above), made a lot of how RISC-V performs into China’s goals for carbon peaking adopted by carbon neutrality, referred to as twin carbon. “We predict quite a bit about chip innovation: first, as a result of we’re serving twin carbon, we should take into account low-power chips; second, as a result of it’s a platform round dual-carbon, our information should be protected, traceable, and non-tamperable in the course of the course of; most significantly, due to de-globalization, we additionally want to make sure the availability chain, and the chips should be based mostly on a controllable and autonomous platform, so we predict RISC-V, an open instruction set structure, is a good selection.”
The chip will seemingly run a Linux distro corresponding to Ubuntu Kylin (opens in new tab), although mainstream Ubuntu has been making inroads (opens in new tab) into the RISC-V structure itself. It will likely be utilized in sensible home equipment, clever logistics and warehousing, plus edge computing functions. No date seems to have been set for its launch.
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