First RISC-V-based development board for Arduino platform

 SiFive, the first fabless provider of customized, open-source-enabled RISC-V semiconductors, today announced the release of the Arduino Cinque, the first RISC-V-based development board for the popular open-source hardware platform. Today’s announcement marks the latest development in SiFive’s work to democratize access to custom silicon.

The Arduino Cinque features SiFive’s Freedom E310, the industry’s first commercially available RISC-V SoC. Running at 320MHz, the FE310 is one of the fastest microcontrollers available in the market. Along with the FE310, the Arduino Cinque also features support for 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth via the inclusion of an ESP32 chip from Espressif, making this among the most advanced Arduino boards available today.

“The availability of the Arduino Cinque provides the many dreamers, tinkerers, professional makers and aspiring entrepreneurs access to state-of-the-art silicon on one of the world’s most popular development architectures,” said Dale Dougherty, founder and executive chairman of Maker Media. “Using an open-source chip built on top of RISC-V is the natural evolution of open-source hardware, and the Arduino Cinque has the ability to put powerful SiFive silicon into the hands of makers around the world.”

Said Jack Kang, vice president of product and business development at SiFive: “By partnering with a pioneer in open-source hardware, SiFive can further advance the progress of open custom silicon among makers, system designers and everyone else in between. We continue to be blown away by the support and attention the open-source silicon movement has gained in the past year alone. We look forward to seeing the community’s reaction to the Arduino Cinque board, and believe that the Arduino concepts of openness and distribution mean that more people than ever will be exposed to RISC-V.”