Bluespec's Linux-capable RISC-V soft processors supported on Achronix FPGAs
Date: 31/03/2024
Achronix Semiconductor and Bluespec have collaborated to introduce a family of Linux-capable RISC-V soft processors for the Achronix Speedster7t FPGA family. This partnership marks a significant industry milestone, offering seamless integration of Bluespec's RISC-V processors into Achronix's 2D network-on-chip (NoC) architecture, simplifying system integration and enhancing scalability for FPGA designs.
Bluespec's RISC-V soft-core family brings software programmability to Speedster7t FPGA designs, streamlining system integration, boosting designer productivity, and reducing time-to-market. The 2D NoC in Achronix Speedster7t FPGAs facilitates easy integration of one or more RISC-V cores into the FPGA fabric, allowing for multiple instances of the core to be added and relocated within the fabric while maintaining performance.
Designers can run C/C++ applications on bare metal or operating systems on hardware subsystems, with one to eight 64-bit processors individually configured with floating point instructions, custom instructions, and hardware accelerators. Each processor's accelerator ports enable memory management and software-driven configuration for high-bandwidth workload accelerators, expediting the development and deployment of Speedster7t FPGA designs.
Leveraging familiar technologies like RISC-V, Linux, RTOS, and software multi-threading accelerates the design process by reducing learning curves and enhancing overall efficiency.
