x86 & Arm have a new competitor! Leapfive to offer in-house RISC-V processors with mass production starting late 2022
Regarding performance, the LeapFive (also known as Yuefang Technology) high-performing RISC-V CPU NB2 can easily compete with Arm’s Cortex A55 and A72 chips. My Drivers website states that “there were few chip startups with explicit target application scenarios.” The logic of converting to the bottom layer has three points: bringing supply chain security to customers, having differentiated features, and having cost advantages. — Yuan Bohu, Vice President of Research and Development, Yuefang Technology It is reported that Yeufang Technology’s strategy of focusing on industrial and IoT operations benefited their rapid growth. Jiang Zhaohui sees the opportunity to resolve energy crisis scenarios and assist with more innovative energy options for consumers, enterprises, and industrial organizations. It is also easier to supply the demand for SoC chiplets in focused marketplaces, such as the industrial markets that utilize RISC-V chips in larger quantities. The first is to use the RISC-V open source CPU architecture to design edge chips with high, medium, and low-end performance; the second is to include blockchain technology to ensure that data cannot be tampered with and the source can be traced; the third is to focus on security performance. — Jiang Zhaohui, founder, CEO, and CTO, Yuefang Technology Leifeng.com discovered Yuefang Technology’s recognition of the need for chips in the industrial and Internet of Things categories at the beginning of the company’s early designs. Now, the company is cooperating with China Electric Power Academy to design a high-performance NB2 processor and is interested in replicating the chips significantly. In terms of software ecology, the software ecology in the industrial field is slightly smaller than the consumer ecology, which is very consistent with the development status of RISC-V. Yuan Bohu, Vice President of Research and Development, Yuefang Technology Pu Tianjiao, director of the Artificial Intelligence Application Research Institute of China Electric Power Research Institute Co., Ltd., shared during a press conference that the energy required for the Internet of Things encounters several common concerns. The director stressed issues such as “high data transmission and processing pressure, heavy computing load on the cloud master station, and massive data value.” Supplying chips is highly difficult and impossible to mine. Hence, new conditions are placed for innovative but “high computing power, low power consumption, and autonomous control at the power edge.” Yuefang Technology’s NB2 chip utilizes a 12nm process to develop a RISC-V processor, focusing on frequencies higher than 1.5GHz and integrating industrial SoCs, NPU, DSP, and VPUs. — Pu Tianjiao, director of the Artificial Intelligence Application Research Institute of China Electric Power Research Institute Co., Ltd. The NB2’s central frequency of the self-developed processor reaches 1.8GHz, while the frequency of the GPU is 850 MHz. For the performance of the NPU, it can go 4 TOPS in INT8 data formats and incorporates the “VPU, visual DSP for enhancing auxiliary NPU visual processing, and audio DSP.” From the perspective of CPU performance, the CPU performance of NB2 is between Arm Cortex A55 and Cortex A72. It is anticipated that NB2 will eventually replay higher-end Arm Cortex M series chips on the market. However, current software limitations are slowing the process down at this time. Yuan Bohu stressed that NB2 is the first globally produced premium 12nm industrial-grade SoC based on RISC-V chip technology. Yuan Bohu, Vice President of Research and Development, Yuefang Technology NB2 also sustains a heterogeneous OS operating setting, meeting the unique needs of specific programs working on bare metal while other programs run Linux in industrial systems. Consumer adaption is also a crucial step for the growth of RISC-V chips. Yuefang Technology’s approach is to supply clients “with a complete system, chips and software, corresponding reference design hardware, and a complete development platform.” News Source: My Drivers This is not a trend.
