Microsemi and SiFive have announced a partnership that will see the latter join the former’s Mi-V RISC-V ecosystem and the launch of a new development board combining a RISC-V system-on-chip (SoC) with a field programmable gate array (FPGA) for enhanced flexibility.

“Microsemi is pleased to welcome SiFive to our Mi-V RISC-V ecosystem as a highly valued collaborator on processor IP,” says Jim Aralis, chief technology officer and vice president of advanced development at Microsemi, of the partnership. “The company’s RISC-V leadership, expertise and development model support our team’s ability to innovate quickly, offer lower power solutions and meet the demands of the marketplace. Working with SiFive also enables us to deliver a stronger RISC-V IP roadmap along with the integration of software integrated development environments (IDEs), debug and design platforms that can be used.”

“Joining the Mi-V RISC-V ecosystem enhances our important relationship with Microsemi while enabling the strategic alignment of our roadmap to facilitate additional end markets and applications for RISC-V designs,” adds Naveed Sherwani, SiFive chief executive. “We look forward to continuing our collaborative successes as we develop this unique hardware and software development platform and empower a growing number of system developers with access to RISC-V technology.”

The pair’s first product will be the HiFive Unleashed, a development board based on SiFive’s Freedom Unleashed 500 (Freedom U500) RISC-V system-on-chip with a Microsemi PolarFire FPGA. With five 64-bit RISC-V cores running at 1.5GHz plus, a coherent 2MB Level 2 (L2) cache, DDR4 memory, gigabit Ethernet, and ChipLink interfaces to external components including the PolarFire FPGA, the HiFive Unleashed promises to be the most flexible and powerful RISC-V development board yet produced – and with full support for booting mainstream Linux kernels.

Availability and pricing have yet to be confirmed.

Image: HiFive1 board, which features a Freedom FE310 SoC ASIC.