BeagleBoard.org Unveils the BeagleV Ahead, a High-Performance RISC-V-Based Single-Board Computer

BeagleBoard.org, the group behind the BeagleBone family of single-board computers, has announced a new model built around the free and open source RISC-V instruction set architecture: the BeagleV Ahead.

"We are extremely excited to introduce BeagleV Ahead to the world," says BeagleBoard.org co-founder of the company's latest design, and its first not to use the Arm architecture for its application-class processor cores. "RISC-V is rapidly gaining momentum as a transformative technology, and we believe that BeagleV Ahead will play a crucial role in its widespread adoption. Our goal is to provide a robust, open-source platform that empowers users to unleash their creativity and develop cutting-edge solutions."

The BeagleV Ahead is based on the Alibaba T-Head TH1520, a quad-core RISC-V system-on-chip with four 2GHz Xuantie C910 processor cores, a fifth digital signal processor (DSP) based on the Xuantie C906 core, a sixth low-power Xuantie E902 core, an Imagination Technologies GPU with 3D acceleration capabilities and a claimed 50 giga-floating-point operations per second (GFLOPS) of compute, and a separate 1GHz neural processing unit (NPU) coprocessor offering four INT8-precision tera-operations per second (TOPS) for deep learning and on-device artificial intelligence work.

Elsewhere on the board is 4GB of LPDDR4 memory, 16GB of eMMC storage, and a microSD Card slot for expansion. There's a dual-band Wi-Fi radio, Bluetooth 5.2, and wired gigabit Ethernet, along with a micro-HDMI port and 5Gb/s USB 3.0 with a micro-USB 3.0 connector for power and data. The traditional BeagleBone-standard 92-pin expansion headers are present and correct, along with a mikroBUS Shuttle connector with UART, I2C, SPI, general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, pulse-width modulation (PWM), and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Finally, there are two MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) inputs and a single Display Serial Interface (DSI) output.

On the software front, BeagleBoard.org is shipping the BeagleV Ahead with a Yocto Project-based Linux installation, while promising "working prototypes" of Ubuntu and Fedora Linux. It's not clear, at the time of writing, how far along these prototypes are in terms of peripheral support — but Canonical, at least, is likely to add the BeagleV Ahead to its list of officially-supported RISC-V single-board computers.

"RISC-V is committed to offering our community a diverse array of hardware and software to innovate. We’re glad another great board is available to help make RISC-V development more accessible," says RISC-V International chief executive officer Calista Redmond of the launch. "We've already seen strong adoption of RISC-V in the markets that BeagleBoard.org is targeting, including the IoT and AI, so we look forward to seeing what developers across the globe create with BeagleV Ahead."

More information on the BeagleV Ahead can be found on the BeagleBoard.org website, while it's now available to order in the channel from Farnell, Newark, and others for $149 with shipping expected to begin at the end of next month.