"BeagleBoard makes FPGA and RISC-V accessible with new BeagleV-Fire single board computer at $150."

BeagleBoard is offering a Raspberry-Pi alternative that uses a RISC-V processor. 5 cores (64-bit, 4 cores that can do floating point math + 1 core that is a special boot core), 3.125 Mhz (CoreMarks benchmark), 16 GB of memory, USB-C and Gigabit Ethernet.

The FPGA (field programmable gate array) has 23K logic elements (4-input LUT + DFF), 68 Math blocks (18x18 MACC), and 4 SerDes lanes. "Logic elements" are programmable logic gates: AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, and XOR. "Math blocks" are blocks that perform arithmetic so you don't have to make arithmetic logic yourself out of logic gates. SerDes means "serializer/deserializer" and are how the FPGA communicates with the outside world.

The "LUT" and "DFF" part refers to "look-up-table" and "D flip-flop". LUT enables you to program gates using lookup tables, and D flip-flops give your logic element a little bit of digital memory. "18x18 MACC" means a multiply-accumulate block that can handle 18-bit numbers.

BeagleBoard.org makes FPGA and RISC-V accessible with new BeagleV-Fire single board computer at $150.

#solidstatelife #riscv