Aries Embedded Launches a RISC-V Development Board in a Familiar Footprint: The FIVEBerry-A0A

RISC-V pioneer Aries Embedded has announced the launch of a carrier board and system-on-module combination designed to provide a RISC-V-based alternative to the Raspberry Pi — albeit with specifications putting it somewhere around the performance level of the low-end Raspberry Pi Zero range: the FIVEberry.

"The FIVEberry baseboard is build around the MSRZFive system-on-module," the company explains of its latest design. "The FIVEberry supports users to have a smooth start-up with the new CPU architecture RZ/Five by Renesas. It supports all necessary features to make first steps with the RISC-V CPU core, develop and debug drivers and the bootloader and even to use it in prototype setups."

While looking a lot like a shrunken Raspberry Pi single-board computer, as its name is intended to imply, the FIVEberry's specifications are somewhat low-end on the computational front. The carrier is bundled with the MSRZFive-A0A, featuring a single 64-bit Renesas RZ/Five microprocessor with a single 64-bit Andes AX45MP RISC-V core running at 1GHz connected to a tight 512MB of DDR4 memory.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly given Renesas' target market for the RZ/Five, the board includes not one but two gigabit Ethernet ports, along with a single full-size USB 2.0 host port and a micro-USB 2.0 On-The-Go port, two CAN bus channels, two I2C buses, a microSD Card slot for storage, a USB-UART console, and a 40-pin Raspberry Pi-style general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header with dual analog to digital (ADC) converter modules — but no video output capabilities.

Aries Embedded is selling the FIVEberry through its own web store at €119 plus tax (around $127), including the system-on-module; the MSRZFive-A0A SOM is available on its own at €46 plus tax (around $49.)