Bouffalo Lab Standardizes on SiFive RISC-V Embedded CPU Core IP for New IoT Products

SiFive E2 Core IP Flexibility and Power-efficient Performance Enable Bouffalo Product differentiation

November 18, 2020 -- SiFive, Inc., the leading provider of commercial RISC-V-based platforms and custom silicon solutions, and Bouffalo Lab, a leading provider of ultra-low-power, safe, AIoT hardware and software platforms, today announced the adoption of SiFive E2-Series Core IP based on RISC-V as part of Bouffalo’s new IoT Bluetooth, Zigbee, Thread and WiFi products, the BL70x and BL602. Bouffalo selected SiFive E2-Series Cores to meet the need for power-efficient performance and ultra-low-power operation in IoT devices for applications such as smart home.

The Bouffalo BL70x chipset is designed for IoT applications and features highly-integrated Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0 connectivity, Zigbee 3.0 (IEEE 082.15.4) wireless mesh with a 2.4GHz radio, and incorporates a SiFive E2-Series 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller. The Bouffalo BL60x series is a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combination chipset designed for ultra-low-power applications, and features Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz support with Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0, and also incorporates a SiFive E2-Series 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller.

The SiFive E2 Core is a compact and power-efficient 32-bit RISC-V-based core design for embedded applications such as IoT, edge computing, and microcontroller use where efficient operation is key to battery life or thermally-constrained designs. Using SiFive Core Designer, Buffalo Labs configured the SiFive E2 Cores to focus on their workload for performance and efficiency in a tiny footprint, creating a 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller with a single-precision floating-point unit, high-speed cache and memories, enabling micro-amp power draw during deep sleep mode for the ultra-low-power Bouffalo chipsets.

"Working with SiFive, the inventors of the open-standard RISC-V architecture, reduces our business risk and enhances Bouffalo’s product viability," said Yonghua Song, Founder & CEO at Bouffalo Lab. "Our trust was well-placed in SiFive and its silicon-proven Core IP, as we realized the efficiency and performance of SiFive RISC-V IP, and quality of their support for integrating the IP into our IoT products."

"The power-efficient, area-optimized E2 core has seen significant traction in IoT applications where battery life is key," said Chris Lattner, President of Product and Platform Engineering at SiFive. "We’re proud to see Bouffalo bring optimized IoT products to market with our industry-leading RISC-V processor cores."

About Bouffalo

Bouffalo Lab is one of very few semiconductor chip design companies that provide high performance, ultra-low-power, safe and reliable AIoT intelligent software and hardware solutions with a complete set of wireless connectivity technologies, including WiFi 6, BT/BLE5.2, Zigbee3.0 and Thread to enable the creation of technology platforms for the Internet of Everything. Bouffalo Lab solutions enable a new generation of high-performance AIoT chips for smart homes, smart cities, smart retails, smart manufacturing, smart robots, communication equipment, in-vehicle smart systems, and smart wearable systems. For more information, please visit www.bouffalolab.com.

About SiFive

SiFive is the leading provider of processor cores, accelerators, and SoC IP to create domain-specific architecture based on the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture. SiFive offers scalable, configurable processor cores pre-integrated with security, trace, and debug features for workload-specific accelerator designs. Founded by the inventors of RISC-V, SiFive has 15 design centers worldwide and backing from Sutter Hill Ventures, SK hynix, Qualcomm Ventures, Western Digital, Intel Capital, Spark Capital, Osage University Partners, and Prosperity7 Ventures. For more information, please visit www.sifive.com.