[phkahler]

Any peripherals on this thing? They mention Ethernet and some SPI flash. How about USB or even a UART? I didn't expect a frame buffer, but what does it actually have? I thought they were going to have PCI via an FPGA, but no sign of that either.

[hucker]

They presented this at FOSDEM today, and ran the entire presentation (and a demo afterwards) on the actual hardware. They used PCI via an FPGA to interface with a standard ATI gfx card iirc. I don't know if the video is out yet, but have a look!

[digi_owl]

No video yet that i can find, but it seem the slides are available.

https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/riscv/

[phkahler]

That's what I hoped could be done. Did they use an open source ATI driver compiled for risc-v? That would make for a very interesting development rig.

[jws]

The page mentions an FMC connector for future expansion, a standard FPGA expansion interface supplying 34 to 160 10Gb/s signals.† I don't know about varieties and compatibility, but Hitec makes a great number of interface cards for it, including an 8 lane PCI Express.‡

␄

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card

‡ http://www.hitechglobal.com/Accessories/FMC_Modules.htm

[gabesk]

I wonder what signals they actually route out the FMC card. The website doesn't give a lot of information, but it seems like probably just ChipLink which they claim is their serialized TileLink bus protocol. So, you probably wouldn't be able to just plug a low-cost FMC module into the board. But with something like https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/ek-s6-sp605-... for another $500, you could theoretically use the DVI connector to provide a framebuffer, the PCI connector to interface to an NVME drive, and the FPGA to implement the logic of a TileLink endpoint as well as a minimal framebuffer and PCIe root complex.

[jackckang]

ChipLink is indeed routed out to the FMC. The demo during FOSDEM was done with a FPGA card attached to the FMC which then drove additional peripherals.

Jack, SiFive

[justinclift]

The instructions for some of the previous dev kits point to "known good" FMC compatible adapters.

The one that caught my interest right away is the PCIe module:

http://www.hitechglobal.com/FMCModules/FMC_PCIExpress.htm

There's also a PCIe expansion that works with it, so increase the number of slots to five:

https://www.onestopsystems.com/product/%C2%B5cube3-expansion...

With those, it seems like enough to test out development for storage applications. eg NAS, etc.

[mrob]

There must be a UART because there's a FT223H and USB port at the top left.

[duskwuff]

For a FT232H on early development hardware, my first thought would be JTAG, not UART. Could be both if it's a '2232, though.

[digi_owl]

That micro port may only be for power.

Or perhaps a client port to allow a PC to talk to the board without a network connection.

[joezydeco]

Yeah, that's totally a console port. The micro-B device connector gives that away.