While the release supports the use of RISC-V soft CPUs in Microsemi’s PolarFire, RTG4, SmartFusion2 and IGLOO2 FPGA, there is also support for the HiFive1 Arduino kit from SiFive.
SoftConsole v5.1 is said to provide a flexible and easy-to-use graphical interface for managing embedded software development projects. “It has a standard GUI,” said Ted Marena, director of SoC marketing, “as well as the Eclipse ‘look and feel’.”
Marena noted the release also provides access to a firmware catalogue. “We’re not just putting this out for RTL engineers, we also want firmware engineers to get involved with RISC-V.” The catalogue includes drivers and example designs. Support will also be added for operating systems such as FreeRTOS.
SoftConsole v5.1 also works with the Libero FPGA design suite. “We have tremendous debug tools in Libero,” Marena continued. “The ability to stop clock enables break point logic, much like with a processor.”
Marena said Microsemi has customers in production with FPGAs featuring the RISC-V core. “Most are using a single core, but one customer is integrating multiple cores.”
