one of the first to offer actual silicon chips —
microcontrollers initially, then Linux-compatible
cores on a single-board computer. Others
followed: Today, you can buy RISC-V chips from
Allwinner, Bouffalo Lab, GigaDevice, GreenWaves
Technologies, and StarFive, with companies
including Alibaba, Google, Seagate, and Western
Digital developing chips for in-house use.
MAKING A SPLASH WITH MAKERS
The biggest news for the maker market, though,
came from Espressif Systems when the company
announced that not only was it launching RISC-V
based products into the ESP32 microcontroller
family but that it would concentrate solely on
NOW BOARDING: RISC-V Chips for Makers
RISC-V architecture from now on, ditching
proprietary alternatives like the Cadence Tensilica
Xtensa architecture.
So all future ESPs will be RISC-V? “Yes, it is
true,” Teo Swee Ann, Espressif chief executive
and president, confirmed on LinkedIn. “Unless we
have some special needs for something else that
I don’t see now.”
What about the maker’s favorite mini
computer? “The main things holding RISC-V back
in the traditional Raspberry Pi/[Arm] Cortex-A
market,” says Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi CEO,
“are a lack of available high-end licensable cores
— I don’t think I can go out and get anything that's
competitive with the Cortex-A72 in Raspberry Pi
4, for example — and a lack of software maturity
in the Linux userland."
“The barriers may be a little lower in the
microcontroller/Cortex-M space, as the software
stacks and core design space are simpler. If/when
RISC-V really takes off,” Upton predicts, “that’s
where it will happen first.”
SINGLE-BOARD SYSTEMS
There are numerous single-board computers
that aim to offer a RISC-V alternative to Arm-
based devices like the Raspberry Pi range. At
first, choices were limited: SiFive’s boards offered
CHIPS ALL IN: Espressif CEO Teo Swee Ann has
committed to RISC-V architecture for all future chips.
The bare ESP32-C3 chip can be had for about $1; the
dev board for $8.
44 makezine.com
FIRST! SiFive’s FE310 SoC was the
industry’s first commercial RISC-V chip.
SiFive, Espressif Systems, StarFive, PINE64
M83_042-45_SS_RISC-V_F1.indd 44M83_042-45_SS_RISC-V_F1.indd 44 10/10/22 1:34 PM10/10/22 1:34 PM
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