We have already spoken on other occasions about free hardware and the opencores.org project, where there are many open source chip projects, including interesting microprocessors such as OpenSPARC, etc. Well now the company SiFive has created an Arduino compatible development board which implements one of these chips. That makes the hardware even more open and more characteristics of the microprocessor that commands it can be known.
The plate in concrete it's called HiFive1, and its main feature, or at least the most striking, since there are many similar or Arduino compatible boards, is precisely this, that of including an MCU or microcontroller unit with a CPU based on open source ISA RISC-V. Undoubtedly great news, and for those who still do not know this type of project, I encourage you to investigate on the opencores.org website, where you will find everything from microprocessors, microcontrollers, MMUs, FPUs, ALUs, memories, etc. , all open projects under various licenses.
It seems that the plate will be sold for about $ 79 now and will drop to $ 59 in January 2017. The reason that drives this creation is the curiosity of researchers, users and university students to learn more about the fantastic RISC-V architecture. What is the importance of these chips, because simple, it happens as in its day with MIPS or now with ARMs, they are of great interest to developers and it seems that specifically RISC-V is awakening the interest of many groups lately.
RISC and MIPS are two architectures that will sound familiar to those of you who are familiar with this world, since they were created by two of the people who know the most about computer architectures: David Patterson (University of California) and John Hennessy (Stanford University). Well, now you can learn more thanks to the E310 SoC of this board with an E31 CorePlex CPU, a 32-bit and 32Mhz RV320IMAC core with 1.61DMIPs / Mhz manufactured by the giant TMSC.