This will allow customers to test out the X280 IP and begin development of RISC-V vector software. The Xara device will be available to select customers in late Q2 of this year.
At the core of the HiFive Xara X280 enablement board is Kinara's Ara-2, which incorporates two SiFive X280 64-bit RISC-V cores. These cores handle pre- and post-processing tasks, tensor filtering and floating-point functions.
Additionally, these cores connect to high-performance, high-efficiency Kinara NPU cores that are optimised for AI inference at the edge with up to 40 TOPS of performance and include support for generative AI workloads like transformer-based models (e.g., LLaVA, LLaMA, and other Large Language Models (LLMs)).
“SiFive’s RISC-V cores complement Kinara’s neural processor cores enabling performance- and cost-optimised end to end inference for edge AI use cases,” said Ravi Annavajjhala, CEO of Kinara. “Together with SiFive, the combined solution is capable of supporting a range of AI workloads, from traditional CNNs to advanced Generative AI and multi-modal vision transformers.”
“We designed the Xara board with the intention of allowing SiFive customers to evaluate the real-time behaviour of the X280 IP before integrating it into their own custom chips,” explained Jack Kang, SVP, WW Business Development, Sales, and Customer Experience. “The expanded ability to access Kinara's Ara-2 processor means developers can also explore the latest in edge AI processing capabilities.”
