How much new hope does the “RISC-V+FPGA” combination bring to domestic manufacturers?

In the past two years, RISC-V has set off a wave of enthusiasm in China, and is seen as an opportunity for the development of "independent and controllable" domestic chips. In 2018, the China RISC-V Industry Alliance and the China Open Instruction Ecosystem (RISC-V) Alliance were established. According to data, more than 300 companies in China are paying attention to RISC-V or developing with the RISC-V instruction set.

It is worth noting that domestic FPGA manufacturers are one of these forces, and perhaps RISC-V is of great significance to FPGA.

In 2016, Microsemi took the lead in launching the industry's first FPGA series products based on the open source processor architecture RISC-V core, which also became a leading event.

"RISC-V processors and FPGA ecosystems are a perfect match. Before RISC-V, the FPGA soft core ecosystem was mainly maintained by various FPGA manufacturers. The underlying code was not open source and was isolated from each other, which resulted in user designs being unable to cross platforms and restricted users' use of FPGA-based processors. The open source nature of RISC-V has given SoC FPGAs new options. As application systems become more and more complex, one direction for FPGA development in the future is SoC FPGA, which enables both software and hardware to be programmed, greatly expanding the application areas of FPGAs. RISC-V will play an important role in the SoC FPGA ecosystem. Anlu Technology has integrated the RISC-V hard core into the ELF2 FPGA, making it easier for users who need MCU functions." Chen Liguang, vice president of the marketing and application department of Anlu Technology, introduced the special significance of RISC-V to Jiwei.com reporters, which brought new possibilities for FPGA programmability.

Hu Zhenbo, founder of Xinlai Technology, holds a similar view. He said that from the development trend, FPGA has evolved from a simple FPGA to a PSoC, which integrates a hard core, but FPGA also needs a soft core to complete the control. Domestic FPGA manufacturers lack certain core capabilities or find it difficult to reach the level of foreign manufacturers, so there is a demand for open source, easy-to-modify, and configurable soft cores, which is exactly what RISC-V has.

Gowin announced that it will embed RISC-V soft cores into FPGA chips in mid-2018, and will first implement it in the Morningside family. In October 2018, Andes Technology's RISC-V CPU processor core was adopted by Gowin Semiconductor in the Arora GW-2A FPGA series.

Hu Zhenbo, the founder of Xinlai Technology, has expressed a view on many occasions: the open RISC-V ecosystem is the last chance for China's semiconductor industry to break the monopoly of foreign companies in the processor field. Since its inception, Xinlai has focused on the research and development of China's local RISC-V processor cores.

Founded in 2018, Xinlai Technology is a representative RISC-V processor core IP and solution company, and has created my country's first open source RISC-V processor project, the Hummingbird E203.

Engineers who are engaged in RISC-V CPU design and RISC-V embedded development may be familiar with the "Hummingbird FPGA Development Board". Judging from the name, this development board may have a certain relationship with the Hummingbird E203. In fact, the two do have a "blood" relationship. The Hummingbird FPGA Development Board is an FPGA-specific development board customized for the Hummingbird E203 open source MCU prototype SoC. This also shows to a certain extent that from the application end, the combination of "FPGA+RISC-V" is also a way to approach developers.

Similarly, developers have also shown some interest in "FPGA+RISC-V". For example, in the Integrated Circuit Double Innovation Competition, a team from Fudan University tried to transplant a RISC-V soft core onto the FPGA chip of Unigroup Tongchuang.

Although Unigroup Tongchuang has not publicly advertised that its FPGA supports the RISC-V plan, its FPGA is also being used by developers to combine with RISC-V.