The world’s first domestically produced RISC-V AI single-board computer is known as the benchmark i5

At the beginning of 2021, there will be new developments in the ecological construction of RISC-V. This week, Saifang Technology released the world's first RISC-V-based AI single-board computer Starlight (BeagleV), which has all the scalability features of today’s desktop computers, with an area of ​​only 85mm x 70mm and a 4GB memory version priced at $119. The 8GB RAM version is priced at $149.

What is the significance of the launch of the first RISC-V AI single-board computer to the development of RISC-V ecology? Is it worth spending $119 to embrace open source?

The first RISC-V AI single-board computer has sufficient performance and an acceptable price

With the application of RISC-V chips in multiple IoT scenarios, more and more developers have begun to accept RISC-V and explore more possibilities of this emerging instruction set. Therefore, development boards based on RISC-V have also been introduced to the market one after another. The latest Starlight AI single-board computer emphasizes strong performance and price.

Saifang Technology CEO Xu Tao

Saifang Technology CEO Xu Tao told Leifeng.com: "The high-performance RISC-V single-board computers that have been launched on the market are very expensive, requiring 600-1000 US dollars, and the price of more than ten US dollars has limited functions. Our new single-board The computer is the configuration of the computer, the performance is powerful enough, and the price is acceptable, the RISC-V single-board computer that takes both into account is currently only Starlight."

The core processor of the Starlight single-board computer is the world’s first RISC-V-based AI vision chip Jinghong 7100 released by Saifang in September 2020. This AI chip integrates a 4-core CPU with a working frequency of up to 1.5GHz and supports the Linux operating system.

At the same time, Jinghong 7100 integrates Saifang's self-developed ISP, which is adapted to mainstream image sensors and can process 4K resolution images in real-time. With the self-developed AI engine, it can complete various complex video image processing and intelligent vision Calculation.

Based on Jinghong 7100, plus USB, PCIe, DDR and other interfaces, Saifang, Seeed and BeagleBoard jointly launched the Starlight AI single-board computer. Leifeng.com learned that the AI ​​performance of the Starlight AI single-board computer can reach up to 6TOPS

Seeed is a solution provider of open source hardware, as well as a professional single-board computer manufacturer and channel provider. BeagleBoard is the operator and brand of the open-source community.

"Through Seeed, we can send Starlight single board computers to every developer. The cooperation with BeagleBoard can port a large amount of software to the RISC-V platform, allowing developers to develop the products they want based on Starlight," Xu Tao Explanation.

Seeed CEO Pan Hao said: "The Star Single Board Computer is the most open source SPC in our history. The connectors can be directly called, and a few hundred yuan can get a completely open-source Linux computer."

It is reported that Starlight single-board computers will be shipped in small quantities from March, and will be supplied to the entire community in large quantities in the second half of this year. The shipment of Starlight single-board computers will play a positive role in RISC-V ecological construction.

How does Starlight Single Board Computer accelerate the construction of RISC-V ecology?

"Ecological construction is actually a cyclical process. If ecological construction is better, more people will make the ecological construction better. On the contrary, if no one uses it, the entire ecological construction process will be slow." Xu Tao Say.

“Therefore, RISC-V is developing very fast in areas with relatively short ecological chains, such as the IoT market. In some applications with relatively long ecological chains, such as the most challenging mobile phone market, it is not enough to break through a single point, and the entire industry is required. Only through chain breakthroughs can it be applied."

Nowadays, Saifang’s Starlight AI single-board computer is a system-level product. This system has Jinghong 7100 chip and Tianshu processor core. The bottom layer is RISC-V instruction set. With system-level products, it can be changed. Widely applied to more scenarios.

However, if the RISC-V ecosystem wants to make further breakthroughs, more cooperation is needed. This is also an important reason why Saifang wants to cooperate with Seeed and BeagleBoard. The cooperation of the three parties will jointly promote the Starlight AI single-board computer to the hardware development board community, and provide a matching Linux-based underlying software development environment and the perfection required for different industry applications. The software basic framework fully supports well-known development tools in the industry.

Such cooperation is of great significance for accelerating the development of RISC-V software and hardware ecology and better meeting the differentiated needs of the market. Xu Tao believes that it has now entered the era where application scenarios determine software and software defines chips.

Pan Hao also believes: "We have entered an era where we no longer drive changes by technology but use demand to drive technology applications. For example, the application of the Internet of Things is just like the diversification of the Internet's demand for software. The products of the Internet of Things start from When an idea is produced, it needs to go through a complicated process. In this process, open-source can incubate products faster."

This means that when the basic software and hardware are ready, the speed of ecological development depends largely on the final application. As far as Saifang is concerned, it's very clear application scenario is smart energy. At the press conference, Saifang Technology signed a strategic contract with Hong Kong and China Energy, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong and China Gas Group.

Qiu Jianhang, general manager of Ganghua Energy, said: "The domestic is vigorously promoting the development of green and clean energy, and we have also made a lot of efforts for the development of smart energy. A large number of customers want intelligent energy-saving and a large number of customized needs, which need to be based on RISC. -V's chip."

Saifang Technology also signed a strategic contract with Ziguang Zhanrui. The two parties will fully cooperate in the instruction set, IP, and ecology, so that the voice of China's RISC-V can be heard by the world, and jointly accelerate China's RISC-V ecology and integrated circuits Industry development.

At present, the scale of Saifang established in 2018 is less than 200 people, but many cooperations have been reached and good results have been achieved. Xu Tao revealed at the press conference that since the establishment of Saifang, there have been more than 100 projects, many of which are AIoT applications. In addition, since the mass production cycle of products including networks, storage, and AI controllers is relatively long, there are relatively few products based on RISC-V.

More possibilities for open source chips

"Chip open source itself doesn't make much sense. The open-source of RISC-V is the standard open-source. For the chip industry, RISC-V brings technical and commercial freedom." Xu Tao said: "Technical freedom is reflected in the use of RISC- V's scalable system can customize the core, and chip companies can develop more competitive chips. Freedom in business means that not only does it require no license, but it also will not be tied, and it can freely switch IP.

Xia Xiaofei, vice president of marketing at Unigroup Zhanrui, said: "We have always supported open source, which allows all technology companies and free developers to accumulate knowledge. This is also an important factor for the open-source system to outperform the closed system in the long run. We are integrating The accumulation of circuit design can feedback the development of RISC-V. Of course, RISC-V also allows us to do some differentiated innovations to better fit the usage scenarios."

In the exploration of RISC-V, on the one hand, products like Xingguang AI single-board computers meet the scenarios of smart homes, robotics, logistics, monitoring, security, autonomous driving, and traffic management with lower power.

On the other hand, RISC-V is also moving towards high-performance fields. Saifang launched the world's highest performance RISC-V processor Tianshu in December last year. The performance of the Tianshu series can be compared to the new Intel Core i5 series and ARM Cortex A76. In addition, Tianshu processors support virtualization and KVM, which is an important feature of RISC-V processors entering the field of high-performance computing.

In other words, RISC-V chips may also be applied to PCs and smartphones in the future. Xu Tao said this is a business choice for them.

RISC-V brings the freedom of technology and business and naturally brings more possibilities. Can the prosperity of the RISC-V ecosystem make it a third-party with ARM and x86?