Welcome BeagleV-Ahead, the RISC-V single board computer

BeagleBoard is announcing the launch of a new open source hardware SBC, sniffing its way into the RISC-V ecosystem – the BeagleV-Ahead. It’s based on the TH1520, a quad core 64-bit RISC-V SoC from T-Head.

(T-Head? Its a Chinese company – T-Head Semiconductor – that is a wholly-owned semiconductor chip business entity of the Alibaba Group.)

BeagleBoard says the new board “offers unparalleled opportunities for developers, hobbyists, and researchers to explore and experiment with RISC-V technology”.

In a compact form factor, with a range of I/O interfaces, it’s aimed at applications such as IoT devices, robotics, AI, and embedded systems.

Headline features of the BeagleV-Ahead include:

RISC-V CPU: Alibaba T-Head TH1520 quad-core RISC-V Xuantie C910 (RV64GCV) processor, Xuantie C906 audio DSP, low power Xuantie E902 core, 50 GFLOPS Imagination 3D GPU, and 4 TOPS NPU
Storage: 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, 16GB eMMC storage, and microSD expansion slot.
Networking: 2.4GHz/5GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 5.2, and Gigabit Ethernet.
Connectivity: microHDMI, USB3 (5Gbps) microAB (host/device), and Serial debug.
Add-on board expansion: mikroBUS shuttle (UART/I2C/SPI/ADC/PWM/GPIO), 2xCSI, DSI, and BeagleBone compatible 92-pin cape header pins.
Linux-Compatible: BeagleV-Ahead comes with Yocto installed out of the box, with Ubuntu & Fedora working prototypes also available.

RISC-V

The use of RISC-V is a move away from Arm, of course, for the TI-leaning platform. The recent BeaglePlay, for example, was powered by a 1.4GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 (the 64-bit TI AM625).

“RISC-V is rapidly gaining momentum as a transformative technology, and we believe that BeagleV-Ahead will play a crucial role in its widespread adoption,” said Jason Kridner, Co-Founder of BeagleBoard.org.

“Our goal is to provide a robust, open-source platform that empowers users to unleash their creativity and develop cutting-edge solutions.”

You can read more on the BeagleV-Ahead webpage.

“RISC-V is committed to offering our community a diverse array of hardware and software to innovate. We’re glad another great board is available to help make RISC-V development more accessible,” said Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International.

“We’ve already seen strong adoption of RISC-V in the markets that BeagleBoard.org® is targeting, including the IoT and AI, so we look forward to seeing what developers across the globe create with BeagleV-Ahead.”