So if you know anything about SiFive, you know where we’re going to start off with the Learn Inventor kit – it’s designed around one of the first commercially available RISC-V SoCs, the SiFive FE310-G003, which is based on SiFive’s E31 Core Complex.
SiFive’s E31 Core on the Learn Inventor kit is based on RISC-V’s RV32IMAC ISA implementation, which is an acronym special that means it’s a 32-bit core with 32 integer registers that supports multiplication and division, and the atomic and compressed extensions for more portable, dense software.
The FE310 processor provides clock speeds of up to 150 MHz as well as 64 Kb of internal SRAM and an additional 512 Kb of Flash for program storage.
Which leads us to another treat on-board the Learn Inventor – an Espressif ESP32 modem. The Espressif modem runs a Bluetooth Low Energy stack and Wi-Fi, which is perfect for those developing low-cost beaconing applications, for example. The ESP32 also enables an essential feature for IoT developers – the ability to write programs downloaded over the air directly to the aforementioned flash storage on the board.
There's also a pretty cool RGB LED array and tons of software support courtesy Amazon FreeRTOS and the SiFive Freedom Studio IDE. For more information on the kit, visit https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/sifive-inventor.
If you want to get exposed to RISC-V processor technology, you can purchase a Learn Inventor Kit for roughly $45. Or, you can roll the dice and try to win this one for free by simply filling out the form below.
Good luck, and we'll see you next week on Dev Kit Weekly.
Questions for @techielew about the kit? Leave a comment.
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