Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

sifive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 97 posts

Re: HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

#11

Post by mSparks »

ajross wrote: post #7
andkon wrote: post #3

For someone who has no idea what RISC-V is but loves making things with Arduino, what new things could I do with this?

It's a much more capable device. The existing RISC-V instances (I don't know much about SiFive's offering per se, I'm just reading off their datasheet) are more comparable to ARM Cortex-M parts -- running in the dozens to hundreds of MHz, with an MMU and a real OS kernel (Linux, obviously, though surely there are BSD ports in the works). Hardware has, in addition to the GPIO, UART and ADC/DAC that you're used to from…

That sounds like these boards are getting to the point they can handle decent audio/signal throughput. But I don't see anything about usb or adc/dac on the site?

Re: HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

#12

Post by 56245623456 »

Klasiaster wrote: post #2

So does it have a MMU? That would make it even more superior to Arduino boards.

The website says it is conforming to "RISC-V Privileged ISA Specification, Version 1.9.1" which seems to specify a paging mechanism. I didn't read all of it though, so I may have overlooked an "optional" or something.

Re: HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

#13

Post by fuzzythinker »

andkon wrote: post #3

For someone who has no idea what RISC-V is but loves making things with Arduino, what new things could I do with this?

Agree, for some who has no idea what RISC-V is, which I'm guessing is more than 50% of visitors, the "why" on the page needs to sell me on why RISC-V is better or at least better for certain things.

Re: HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

#14

Post by rwmj »

56245623456 wrote: post #12
Klasiaster wrote: post #2

So does it have a MMU? That would make it even more superior to Arduino boards.

The website says it is conforming to "RISC-V Privileged ISA Specification, Version 1.9.1" which seems to specify a paging mechanism. I didn't read all of it though, so I may have overlooked an "optional" or something.

The most basic option for RISC-V is base + bound in M-mode which isn't paging and can barely be described as an "MMU". (Of course RISC-V also supports much more advanced options)

Re: HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

#15

Post by rwmj »

andkon wrote: post #3

For someone who has no idea what RISC-V is but loves making things with Arduino, what new things could I do with this?

RISC-V is an open source ISA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V

It has a number of implementations, both fully open source ones (BSD licensed), and proprietary. This one is based on the open source Rocket Chip implementation (https://github.com/ucb-bar/rocket), which is a simple in-order design, something like ARM Cortex-M or Intel Atom. (There is also one open source out-of-order design called BOOM - https://github.com/ucb-bar/riscv-boom)

Re: HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

#16

Post by wolfgke »

fuzzythinker wrote: post #13
andkon wrote: post #3

For someone who has no idea what RISC-V is but loves making things with Arduino, what new things could I do with this?

Agree, for some who has no idea what RISC-V is, which I'm guessing is more than 50% of visitors, the "why" on the page needs to sell me on why RISC-V is better or at least better for certain things.

I rather believe that if you don't know what RISC-V is, you simply are not the audience.

Re: HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

#18

Post by noselasd »

mSparks wrote: post #11
ajross wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a much more capable device. The existing RISC-V instances (I don't know much about SiFive's offering per se, I'm just reading off their datasheet) are more comparable to ARM Cortex-M parts -- running in the dozens to hundreds of MHz, with an MMU and a real OS kernel (Linux, obviously, though surely there are BSD ports in the works). Hardware has, in addition to the GPIO, UART and ADC/DAC that you're used to from…

That sounds like these boards are getting to the point they can handle decent audio/signal throughput. But I don't see anything about usb or adc/dac on the site?

If you want an arduino compatible device that can do audio processing, go for a Teensy board (https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ , http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_Audio.html)

Re: HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

#19

Post by TD-Linux »

ajross wrote: post #7
andkon wrote: post #3

For someone who has no idea what RISC-V is but loves making things with Arduino, what new things could I do with this?

It's a much more capable device. The existing RISC-V instances (I don't know much about SiFive's offering per se, I'm just reading off their datasheet) are more comparable to ARM Cortex-M parts -- running in the dozens to hundreds of MHz, with an MMU and a real OS kernel (Linux, obviously, though surely there are BSD ports in the works). Hardware has, in addition to the GPIO, UART and ADC/DAC that you're used to from…

The chip linked is the E310G, which neither has a MMU or real OS kernel (same as Cortex-M). It also doesn't have most of the peripherals you listed (maybe you got it confused with their other, larger chip). It really is a Arduino competitor (though much faster).

Re: HiFive1: A RISC-V-based, Open-Source, Arduino-Compatible Development Kit

#20

Post by wolfgke »

mwcampbell wrote: post #5
Klasiaster wrote: post #2

So does it have a MMU? That would make it even more superior to Arduino boards.

It seems to me that an MMU is no good if the board doesn't have enough RAM to run a general-purpose operating system, as opposed to a bare-metal program or a real-time OS like a microcontroller usually uses.

> It seems to me that an MMU is no good if the board doesn't have enough RAM to run a general-purpose operating system, as opposed to a bare-metal program or a real-time OS like a microcontroller usually uses.

For a realtime operating system at least a Memory Protection Unit (to use the word that ARM introduced for this limited form of an MMU) is very useful since it can easily make the OS much more reliable if a process cannot write to memory adresses of the kernel or other processes.

EDIT: Or is such an MPU implied by the support for "Privileged ISA Specification v1.9.1"?

Post reply on HN