“Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC), a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, today announced the release of its SoftConsole version 5.1, the world’s first available Windows-hosted Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) for designs utilizing RISC-V open instruction set architectures (ISAs) such as RV32I. SoftConsole, Microsemi’s free software development environment enabling rapid production of C and C++ programming language designs for its field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), will be showcased at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in a presentation highlighting its open architecture, low power and development capabilities using RISC-V soft central processing unit (CPU) cores. “With the majority of Microsemi FPGA designers utilizing a Windows platform for their development efforts, SoftConsole v5.1 not only supports our RISC-V soft CPU cores to enable designs with our highly secure and reliable FPGAs, but it can also be used for any RV32I standard ISA extensions,” said Tim Morin, director of marketing at Microsemi, who will be presenting on the subject at DAC on June 20. “This product release broadens the RISC-V ecosystem for those developing on Windows machines, and leverages our leadership position as we continue investing in this architecture to provide customers dependable, long-term roadmap support.” Microsemi’s SoftConsole v5.1, a GNU compiler collection (GCC), now supports both Windows and Linux for RISC-V designs and can be used for RV32I implementations including extensions to the baseline RV32I architecture such as M,A,F,D,G and C. Offering low power and an open architecture, it supports Microsemi’s PolarFire™, RTG4™, SmartFusion™2 and IGLOO™2 FPGA-based RISC-V soft CPUs as well as the HiFive1 Arduino kit from SiFive, a fabless semiconductor company that produces computer chips based on the RISC-V ISA. SoftConsole v5.1 is ideal for developing a wide variety of applications within the aerospace and defense, communications, data center and industrial markets. RISC-V, an ISA which is now a standard open architecture under the governance of the RISC-V Foundation, offers numerous benefits, including enabling the open source community to test and improve cores at a faster pace than closed ISAs. As the RISC-V intellectual property (IP) core is not encrypted, it can be used to ensure trust and certifications not possible with closed architectures. Portability is another benefit of the technology. For example, designers can begin development with Microsemi’s RISC-V core in its FPGAs and then move to an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) royalty-free.”