digikey.com, Jan. 09, 2020 –
Designers are under constant pressure to innovate yet keep their intellectual property (IP) secret, while also lowering power consumption and cost. This made the RISC-V open-source hardware instruction set architecture (ISA) interesting for designers of processors for mobile applications. Now that RISC-V is an option for microcontrollers, designers of embedded systems and consumer devices need a quick on-ramp to start their own RISC-V designs.
One such on-ramp is the FE310 LoFive-R1 development board from GroupGets LLC. Before introducing the LoFive-R1, this article will discuss RISC-V and why a developer may want to consider using it. It will then describe the LoFive-R1 and show how to get started developing applications, including some tips and tricks.
What is RISC-V?
RISC-V is an open-source hardware instruction set architecture project that began at the University of California Berkeley in 2010. There were many reasons for creating the RISC-V architecture, including...