SiFive, the founder and leader of RISC-V computing, announced that it has been selected by NASA to provide the core CPU for NASA’s next-generation High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor. HPSC is expected to be used in virtually every future space mission, from planetary exploration to lunar and Mars surface missions. The HPSC will utilize an 8-core, SiFive® IntelligenceTM X280 RISC-V vector core, as well as four additional SiFive RISC-V cores, to deliver 100x the computational capability of today’s space computers. This massive increase in computing performance will help usher in new possibilities for a variety of mission elements, such as autonomous rovers, vision processing, space flight, guidance systems, communications, and other applications.

The SiFive X280 is a multi-core capable RISC-V processor with vector extensions and SiFive Intelligence Extensions and is optimized for AI/ML compute at the edge. The X280 is ideal for applications requiring high-throughput, single-thread performance while under significant power constraints. The X280 has demonstrated a 100x increase in compute capabilities compared to today’s space computers. In scientific and space workloads, the X280 provides several orders of magnitude improvement compared to competitive CPU solutions.

“As the leading RISC-V, U.S.-based, semiconductor company, we are very proud to be selected by the premier world space agency to power their most mission-critical applications,” said Jack Kang, SVP Business Development, SiFive. “The X280 demonstrates orders of magnitude performance gains over competing processor technology, and our SiFive RISC-V IP allows NASA to take advantage of the support, flexibility, and long-term viability of the fast-growing global RISC-V ecosystem." We’ve always said that with SiFive, the future has no limits, and we’re excited to see the impact of our innovations extend well beyond our planet. "

The open and collaborative nature of RISC-V will allow the broad academic and scientific software development community to contribute to and develop scientific applications and algorithms, as well as optimize the many math functions, filters, transforms, neural net libraries, and other software libraries, as part of a robust and long-term software ecosystem.

The HPSC processor and X280 compute subsystem are expected to be useful to other government agencies in a variety of applications, including industrial automation, edge computing, ratification intelligence, and aerospace applications.

Click here to learn about the High-Performance Spaceflight Computing Processor.