Low power PolarFire SoC FPGA product family based on RISC-V

     The trend towards compute-intensive gateways and edge devices is driving the need to integrate traditional deterministic control applications with additional embedded processing capabilities, which are necessary components to develop intelligent and securely connected systems. In response to this need, Microchip Technology launched the PolarFire System-on-Chip (SoC) field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Early Adoption Program (EAP). Built on the award-winning, medium-density PolarFire FPGA family, the new product provides the world's first RISC-V based, enhanced real-time microprocessor subsystem with Linux operating system support, bringing best-in-class low power, thermal efficiency and defense-grade security to embedded systems.

     Eligible EAP customers can design immediately with Microchip's Libero SoC 12.3 FPGA design kit and SoftConsole 6.2 Integrated Development environment for embedded developers. Customers can now also debug their embedded applications using Renode, a virtual model of the microprocessor subsystem.

     Bruce Weyer, Microchip's vice president of FPGA business, said: "By delivering the industry's first RISC-V-based SoC FPGA and the corresponding Mi-V ecosystem, Microchip and its Mi-V partners are driving innovation in the embedded space and enabling designers to develop new, low-energy applications." This will enable our customers to add new capabilities to their network edge devices to meet the needs of areas such as communications, defense, medical and industrial automation."

     The PolarFire SoC uses 50% less energy than comparable products in the industry, providing customers with numerous benefits including reduced material costs by eliminating the need for fans and radiators. It is also the first SoC FPGA with a deterministic, consistent RISC-V CPU cluster and a deterministic L2 memory subsystem, supporting Linux and real-time applications.

     The Mi-V RISC-V ecosystem is a comprehensive set of tools and design resources developed by Microchip and numerous third-party partners to fully support RISC-V design while supporting multiple real-time operating systems, including Linux. Several RISC-V ecosystem partners have said they will support the PolarFire SoC, Including WindRiver, Mentor Graphics, WolfSSL, ExpressLogic, Veridify, Hex-Five, and FreeRTOS, Development tools from IAR systems and AdaCore will also support PolarFire SoC.

     Michel Genard, vice President of Product Management at Wind River, said: "For developers working to integrate technologies such as artificial intelligence while also tackling the challenge of building real-time systems with predictable behavior, VxWorks® support for PolarFire SoC is critical to moving the industry forward." Given PolarFire's deterministic, safety-focused applications and RISC-V support, we expect Microchip's new SoC FPGas to be well received by our broad customer base."

     Scot Morrison, General Manager, Embedded Platform Solutions Business Unit, Mentor, Siemens, said: "Low power consumption is a key design consideration for the vast majority of Nucleus RTOS users, making Mentor's support for PolarFire SoC as an embedded computing platform inevitable. By porting Nucleus to PolarFire SoC, we are helping developers bring Nucleus to a broader set of deterministic applications that have specific requirements for both scalability and superior reliability."

     PolarFire SoC has a wide range of debugging capabilities, Includes instruction tracking and passive runtime configurable Advanced Extensible Interface (AXI) bus monitor from Mi-V partner UltraSoC, 50 breakpoints, FPGA architecture monitor, and Microchip's built-in dual-channel logic analyzer SmartDebug. The PolarFire SoC is built with reliability and security features, including single error correction and double error detection (SEC-DED) on all memory, physical memory protection, anti-differential power analysis (DPA) encryption core, defense-grade secure boot, and 128 Kb flash boot memory.