NASA’s JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) has selected Microchip to design and manufacture the multi-core High Performance Spaceflight Computer (HPSC) microprocessor SoC based on eight RISC-V X280 cores from SiFive with vector-processing instruction extensions organized into two clusters, with four additional RISC-V cores added for general-purpose computing. The project’s operational goal is to develop “flight computing technology that will provide at least 100 times the computational … Read More → "NASA Recruits Microchip, SiFive, and RISC-V to Develop 12-Core Processor SoC for Autonomous Space Missions"
I sometimes feel like I’m listening to a broken record when a company calls to tell me about the wonders of their new artificial intelligence (AI) processor. I try to say “Ooh” and “Aah” in all the right places, but oftentimes my heart isn’t really in it. Every now and then, however, I do get to hear something that makes me sit up in … Read More → "DeGirum Has the Best Edge AI Story Ever!"
Even though the company had telegraphed its big move, MIPS’s adoption of the RISC-V ISA for its future processor cores hit me like a ton of bricks. MIPS is one of the heroes of the early RISC revolution, and the company has gone through a lot of ups and downs. Big ups. Big downs. Jim Turley discussed the MIPS announcement about joining the RISC-V gang … Read More → "MIPS Rolls Out Its First RISC-V Processor Core – It’s a Big ‘Un"
Microchip previewed its PolarFire 2 mid-range SoC FPGA family at the RISC-V Summit last month in two presentations including a keynote given by Bruce Weyer, the company’s Corporate VP for FPGAs. Although the company provided very few product details, it dropped many hints. So many hints, in fact, that I can give you the information I’ve collected based on these hints, tell you what I … Read More → "Does 2+2=4? Microchip announces PolarFire 2; You Do the Math"
I sometimes wonder how many words I’ve written professionally in my lifetime. At least two of my books (search for “Clive Maxfield” on Amazon) have exceeded 850 pages, but I have no idea how this equates to words, and I have no intention of spending any of the precious seconds I still have on this plane of existence counting them. …
Read More → "Yet Another 100 Captivating Columns and Counting!"When Federico Faggin arrived at Intel in 1970, he immediately discovered that he’d stepped into a royal mess. He’d left Fairchild Semiconductor and accepted the position at Intel before being fully briefed on the custom chip set project for Busicom that would eventually become the first commercially successful microprocessor, the 4004. Faggin had developed a silicon-gate MOS process technology at Fairchild, knew it was vastly superior … Read More → "A History of Early Microcontrollers, Part 7: The Zilog Z8"
