Intel and SiFive showcase RISC-V Horse Creek development platform

Last year, Intel confirmed that it will build its own RISC-V development platform “Horse Creek” based on SiFive’s Performance P550, and it will be manufactured using the Intel 4 process, which may be Intel’s first 7nm product.

After Intel announced the IDM 2.0 strategy, SiFive has already cooperated with Intel, and the related IP of SiFive can use Intel’s foundry service business (IFS), and the relationship between the two parties is very close. Earlier this year, Intel announced its participation in RISC-V International, joining forces with leading partners in the RISC-V ecosystem, with plans to offer a range of proven RISC-V IP cores that are performance-optimized for different market segments.

According to WikiChip Fuse, Intel showcased the “Horse Creek” development board with SiFive at the “Intel Innovation” summit, which was inspired by the Raspberry Pi in design and has more interfaces than other RISC-V development boards. It uses 8GB of onboard DDR5 memory, provides a PCIe Gen5 slot, and various monitoring and debugging interfaces.

The RISC-V architecture processor on the “Horse Creek” development board has four SiFive Performance P550 cores, is manufactured using the Intel 4 process, measures 4 mm x 4 mm, and is packaged in a 19 mm x 19 mm BGA package. The SoC also integrates Intel’s PCIe Gen5 PHY with eight lanes, along with Intel’s DDR5 PHY at 5600MT/s, and other proprietary controllers. Intel ran the Linux operating system using “Horse Creek” and demonstrated various features, such as video playback.