The OpenHW Group, a corporation set as much as promote free and open supply silicon efforts, is launching an in-house microcontroller improvement board designed to get customers began with its 32-bit RISC-V RV32E40P processor core: the CORE-V MCU DevKit.
“The CORE-V MCU DevKit is a turnkey, open supply improvement and prototyping platform for the CORE-V MCU System on Chip [SoC],” the OpenHW Group writes in help of the gadget’s launch. “The CORE-V MCU DevKit allows makers of IoT [Internet of Things] and embedded methods to judge the efficiency of the CORE-V MCU, to interconnect with Wi-Fi and the IoT cloud, and to develop and take a look at software program utilizing the CORE-V SDK [Software Development Kit].”
The CORE-V MCU DevKit goals to spice up curiosity in permissively-licensed fully-open microcontroller and SoC designs. (📷: OpenHW Group)
The guts of the board is the CV32E40Pv1 processor core, a four-stage in-order 32-bit RISC-V implementation launched by the group beneath the permissive Solderpad 2.1 license. Totally open, the core contains the essential 32-bit RISC-V integer directions plus extensions for multiplication and division, efficiency counters, management and standing registers, instruction-fetch fencing, and compressed directions.
This core in flip lives throughout the CORE-V MCU, a microcontroller constructed utilizing GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX course of and mixing the C32E40P with peripherals, reminiscence, and an ArcticPro 2 embedded FPGA (eFPGA) from Quicklogic — with every part bar the eFPGA additionally made obtainable beneath the Solderpad 2.1 license. The chip contains 512kB of static RAM, two UART, QSPI, I2C, and one SDIO buses, a digital camera interface, a separate I2C shopper interface, a pulse-width modulation (PWM) timer with 4 channels, JTAG debugging help, and 32 general-purpose enter/output (GPIO) pins.
Elsewhere on the board is an AWS IoT ExpressLink module with Wi-Fi connectivity to the AWS IoT ExpressLink cloud platform, a mikroBUS header, an on-board I2C temperature sensor, user-addressable LEDs, a single user- a USB Sort-C connector for knowledge, energy, and debugging, 4MB of flash reminiscence, and a connector for an optionally available 5-18V DC energy provide. The bundle additionally features a Himax low-power CMOS digital camera sensor, linked by way of a versatile ribbon cable.
For the software program aspect, the OpenHW Group has supplied an open supply software program improvement equipment (SDK), together with an Eclipse-based built-in improvement atmosphere (IDE), the FreeRTOS real-time working system, a GNU GCC toolchain, peripheral driver libraries, and instance code. That is suitable with Home windows 10, Home windows 11, and Linux on 64-bit x86 {hardware} — with neither Arm nor, satirically, RISC-V hosts but supported.
The not-for-profit is taking orders for the CORE-V MCU DevKit by way of GroupGets at $199 plus delivery, with {hardware} anticipated to start supply in November; on the time of writing, it had raised 63 p.c of its 180-unit funding purpose.
