Microchip unveils PIC64 family of RISC-V multicore processor chips for Earth and for space

Literally the day after writing the article about the Microchip PolarFire SoC Discovery Kit based on the company’s PolarFire SoC FPGA, Microchip gave me a preview of two closely related products. The new products, announced last month, are the company’s PIC64GX microcontroller and a development board for this microcontroller called the PIC64GX Curiosity Kit. The PolarFire SoC Discovery Kit discussed in my previous article is based on Microchip’s PolarFire SoC FPGA, which melds the software programmability of five 64-bit RISC-V processors with a fair-sized chunk of FPGA fabric. (See “Microchip’s PolarFire SoC Discovery Kit provides low-cost access to a powerful SoC FPGA development platform.”) To put it as succinctly as possible, the PIC64GX is a microcontroller based on the PolarFire SoC FPGA’s RISC-V microprocessor subsystem with a DDR4/LPDDR4 SDRAM controller and some additional hardened peripherals, but minus the FPGA fabric. The PolarFire SoC FPGA and the PIC64GX microcontroller are pin- and software-compatible, which means you can start developing a product using the PIC64GX microcontroller, and then, if you need extra processing horsepower, switch to the PolarFire SoC FPGA.

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