SiFive Unleashes New 7-Series RISC-V Cores With Better Performance

SiFive this week announced their 7-Series RISC-V cores with the 32-bit E7, 64-bit S7, and 64-bit U7 series. These new RISC-V parts aren't yet capable of running up against the fastest ARM Cortex CPU cores available today, but they are much more powerful than the previous-gen SiFive cores.

The new SiFive U74 cores are reported to be comparable to the ARM Cortex-A55, though we have yet to see benchmarks proving that performance. Some of the highlights of the new RISC-V cores include:

- SiFive Core IP 7 Series is now available as the "highest performing commercially available RISC-V cores."

- The SiFive Core IP U7 Series is a Linux-capable applications processor while the E76/E76-MC and S76/S76-MC also support bare metal environments and real-time operating systems.

- The 7-Series offers 8+1 cores per cluster, 64-bit memory addressability, built on an optimized 8-stage in-order pipeline (to help with side channel attacks), and other architectural improvements.

More details at SiFive.com on the Core IP 7 Series. There's no word yet if they intend to release a new developer board soon to feature the new U74-MC or if they now intend to slash the price on the existing HiFive Unleashed based on their now older U540 SoC technology and currently priced at $999 USD.