HiFive Unleashed

Last updated
HiFive Unleashed
Also known asHFV or HiFive
DeveloperSiFive
ManufacturerSiFive
TypeSBC, dev board
Generation1
Release dateFebruary 1, 2018;5 years ago (2018-02-01)
Introductory price$999 USD
Operating system Debian Linux
System on a chip Freedom U540
Memory8 GB DDR4 with ECC
StorageMicroSD
Website www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unleashed

The HiFive Unleashed, or HFU is a single-board computer development board created by SiFive with the intention to increase exposure and adoption of the open-source RISC-V architecture. [1] [2] [3]

The HFU is capable of running the Debian Linux distribution and Quake II . [4] [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debian</span> Linux distribution based on free and open-source software

Debian, also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of Debian (0.01) was released on September 15, 1993, and its first stable version (1.1) was released on June 17, 1996. The Debian Stable branch is the most popular edition for personal computers and servers. Debian is also the basis for many other distributions, like PureOS, Ubuntu, Pardus, and Linux Mint.

MIPS is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA) developed by MIPS Computer Systems, now MIPS Technologies, based in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PowerPC</span> RISC instruction set architecture by AIM alliance

PowerPC is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. PowerPC, as an evolving instruction set, has been named Power ISA since 2006, while the old name lives on as a trademark for some implementations of Power Architecture–based processors.

ARM is a family of RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computer processors. Arm Ltd. develops the ISAs and licenses them to other companies, who build the physical devices that use the instruction set. It also designs and licenses cores that implement these ISAs.

OpenRISC is a project to develop a series of open-source hardware based central processing units (CPUs) on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. It includes an instruction set architecture (ISA) using an open-source license. It is the original flagship project of the OpenCores community.

Keith Packard is a software developer, best known for his work on the X Window System.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UEFI</span> Operating system and firmware specification

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is a specification that defines the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting the computer hardware and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples of firmware that implement the specification are AMI Aptio, Phoenix SecureCore, TianoCore EDK II, InsydeH2O. UEFI replaces the BIOS which was present in the boot ROM of all personal computers that are IBM PC compatible, although it can provide backwards compatibility with the BIOS using CSM booting. Intel developed the original Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) specification. Some of the EFI's practices and data formats mirror those of Microsoft Windows. In 2005, UEFI deprecated EFI 1.10.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ubuntu</span> Linux distribution developed by Canonical

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in multiple editions: Desktop, Server, and Core for Internet of things devices and robots. The operating system is developed by the British company Canonical, and a community of other developers, under a meritocratic governance model. As of October 2023, the most-recent release is 23.10, and the current long-term support release is 22.04.

Technical variations of Linux distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons. Other criteria include security, including how quickly security upgrades are available; ease of package management; and number of packages available.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">QEMU</span> Free virtualization and emulation software

QEMU is a free and open-source emulator. It emulates a computer's processor through dynamic binary translation and provides a set of different hardware and device models for the machine, enabling it to run a variety of guest operating systems. It can interoperate with Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to run virtual machines at near-native speed. QEMU can also do emulation for user-level processes, allowing applications compiled for one architecture to run on another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BeagleBoard</span> Single board computer

The BeagleBoard is a low-power open-source single-board computer produced by Texas Instruments in association with Digi-Key and Newark element14. The BeagleBoard was also designed with open source software development in mind, and as a way of demonstrating the Texas Instrument's OMAP3530 system-on-a-chip. The board was developed by a small team of engineers as an educational board that could be used in colleges around the world to teach open source hardware and software capabilities. It is also sold to the public under the Creative Commons share-alike license. The board was designed using Cadence OrCAD for schematics and Cadence Allegro for PCB manufacturing; no simulation software was used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raspberry Pi</span> Series of low-cost single-board computers used for educational purposes and embedded systems

Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. Since 2013, Raspberry Pi devices have been developed and supported by a subsidiary of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, now named Raspberry Pi Ltd. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned toward the promotion of teaching basic computer science in schools. The original model became more popular than anticipated, selling outside its target market for uses such as robotics. It is widely used in many areas, such as for weather monitoring, because of its low cost, modularity, and open design. It is typically used by computer and electronic hobbyists, due to its adoption of the HDMI and USB standards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben NanoNote</span>

The Ben NanoNote is a pocket computer using the Linux-based OpenWrt operating system. An open-source hardware device developed by Qi Hardware, it has been called possibly "the world's smallest Linux laptop for the traditional definition of the word.". In addition, the Ben NanoNote is noteworthy for being one of the few devices on the market running entirely on copyleft hardware.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allwinner A1X</span>

The Allwinner A1X is a family of single-core SoC devices designed by Allwinner Technology from Zhuhai, China. Currently the family consists of the A10, A13, A10s and A12. The SoCs incorporate the ARM Cortex-A8 as their main processor and the Mali 400 as the GPU.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banana Pi</span>

Banana Pi is a line of single-board computers produced by the Chinese company Shenzhen SINOVOIP Co., Ltd., its spin-off Guangdong BiPai Technology Co., Ltd. and supported by Hon Hai Technology (Foxconn).

RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. Unlike most other ISA designs, RISC-V is provided under royalty-free open-source licenses. Many companies are offering or have announced RISC-V hardware; open source operating systems with RISC-V support are available, and the instruction set is supported in several popular software toolchains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SiFive</span> Fabless semiconductor company providing RISC-V processors

SiFive, Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company and provider of commercial RISC-V processor IP and silicon chips based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). SiFive's products include cores, SoCs, IPs, and development boards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinebook</span> Notebook intended for open-source software

The Pinebook is a low-cost notebook developed by Hong Kong-based computer manufacturer Pine64. The Pinebook was announced in November 2016 and production started in April 2017. It is based on the platform of Pine64's existing Pine A64 single board computer, costing US$89 or US$99 for the 11.6" and 14" model respectively. Its appearance resembles the MacBook Air. The Pinebook is sold "at-cost" by Pine64 as a community service.

The Freedom U540 is a microprocessor using the RISC-V open architecture by fabless semiconductor company SiFive that is used to power the HiFive Unleashed computer. The U540 is one of the first commercially available microprocessors to use the RISC-V architecture, which is in contrast to the majority of the market, which uses mostly proprietary x86 and ARM microarchitectures. As the U540 was designed specifically for the HFU, it is not available on other devices or as a standalone component.

References

  1. "Microsemi And SiFive Launch HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board, Enabling Linux Software And Firmware Developers To Build RISC-V PCs For The First Time - RISC-V Foundation". 7 May 2018.
  2. "Hi-Five Unleashed: The first Linux-capable RISC-V single board computer is here". 13 December 2023.
  3. Halfacree, Gareth (2018-02-05). "SiFive announces 64-bit 1.5GHz RISC-V HiFive Unleashed SBC". bit-tech.net. Retrieved 2018-11-19.
  4. Linus Tech Tips (22 August 2018). "An Open Source CPU!?" via YouTube.
  5. "InstallingDebianOn/SiFive/HiFiveUnleashed - Debian Wiki". wiki.debian.org.