Canonical launches specially optimized Ubuntu images for PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle RISC-V development boards.

CTOnews.com March 9 news, Canonical for StarFive VisionFive 2, LicheeRV, Nezha and other RISC-V development boards specifically optimized Ubuntu distribution, today the company once again launched an optimized Ubuntu image for PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle Kit RISC-V development boards.

The PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle suite is a RISC-V development board with a SiFive E51 monitoring kernel and four SiFive U54 application kernels. The board has 2GB LPDDR4 memory, 1Gb SPI flash and 8GB eMMC flash, and a SD card slot.

The Icicle kit has four 12.7 Gbps SERDES interfaces, PCIe Gen2 root ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, two SPI, and one Raspberry Pi-compatible 40-pin connector. There is no display / graphics support.

Although the Icicle suite is advertised as "low cost", the development board sells for $590 (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 4106 yuan), which is obviously expensive for enthusiasts / low-cost independent developers.