SiFive Slashes $200 Off Its HiFive Premier P550 RISC-V Board Price, Launches a New 32GB Version Too
And if you already picked up one of the 16GB "Early Access Edition" models, good news: you're getting a refund of the difference.
RISC-V pioneer SiFive has announced a price cut to its HiFive Premier P550 development board, dropping the entry price to $399 for the 16GB model — and existing buyers will receive a refund of the difference.
"Due to the boards' initial popularity, we worked closely with our manufacturing partner, Eswin, to ramp up production," SiFive explains of the surprise price drop. "As a result of increased production and economies of scale, we’re excited to announce we are able to lower the price to just $399 for the 16GB version and $499 for the 32GB version, making this powerful development board more accessible to a wider range of developers, enthusiasts, and designers.
SiFive unveiled the HiFive Premier P550 back in April, after its partnership with Intel to launch a device known as the HiFive Pro P550 fell through. The system-on-module and bundled carrier board is based on an Eswin EIC7700 system-on-chip packing four 1.4GHz SiFive Performance P550 cores, a proprietary implementation of the free and open source RISC-V RV64GBC architecture, an Imagination AXM-8-256 2D/3D graphics processor, and a neural coprocessor delivering a claimed 20 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of compute at minimum precision. Orders opened in late October for an "Early Access Edition" with 16GB of RAM at $599 — $200 more than the new price point.
Ordinarily, a post-launch price drop would be considered the cost of being an early adopter — but SiFive has decided to stand by those who picked up a launch model. "For those who acted quickly and purchased a board before the price drop, we want to thank you for your support," the company explains. "We'll be issuing a refund for the price difference to show our appreciation. You will receive an email from Arrow explaining next steps."
The reduction in price, and availability of a 32GB model at $499, comes as Canonical announces that currently-shipping models will come with Ubuntu 24.04 Linux pre-installed as standard. "Canonical is deeply committed to RISC-V and creating the best software environment possible for developers coming into this ecosystem," says Canonical's Gordan Markus. "The HiFive Premier P550 is set to be the de facto development platform, and with Ubuntu coming pre-installed on the board we are excited to see the platform used by innovators and developers."
More information on 16GB and 32GB versions of the HiFive Premier P550 are available on SiFive's website, along with links to order both.