Microchip Launches PolarFire RISC-V and FPGA Development Board

By Robert Huntley, EE Times Europe

With the PolarFire SoC Discovery Kit, Microchip makes RISC-V and FPGA hardware available to engineers working at all levels.

The RISC-V architecture is never far from the news. However, away from the headlines, many embedded developers may question how they can start prototyping a RISC-V design without having to commit the engineering budget to a raft of new development tools and resources. The latest FPGA and RISC-V development kit from Microchip is a good example of a low-cost platform which is supported by a broad range of affordable tool chains from an ecosystem of established vendors.

RISC-V targets SoC processor cores

There are clear signs that the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) is gaining mainstream adoption. RISC-V cores already appear in many high-end processors, such as those destined for a hyperscaler’s data center server racks. However, the RISC-V Foundation has its sights set on more ambitious goals. In his “State of the Union” address at the 2022 RISC-V Summit, Krste Asanović, professor at UC Berkeley and chair of RISC-V International, boldly said, “All your cores belong to us.” The statement (see below slide 8 of his presentation) sees RISC-V target any processor core inside an SoC, everything from application processors to FPGA-based software-defined radio (SDR) transceivers. Asanović highlighted that many SoCs available today utilize cores with poorly supported, proprietary ISAs, and switching to RISC-V cores benefits from a well-defined and expanding ecosystem community.

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