2020 BRN Discussion, page-21450

Hi Dingo

The importance is this. If you look at the three phase 1 projects commenced by Vorago and paid for by NASA the first one is the actual AKD1000 chip which will be hardened in as unchanged a form as Vorago can manage. You will notice in the first paragraph that it states "Neural Networks operating at the Edge will need to perform Continuous Learning and Few-shot/One-shot Learning with very low energy requirements, as will NN".

The second phase 1 refers to the "NN co-processor" which is a modified AKD1000 with different features yet to be completely finalised.

The third phase 1 is a further variant of AKD1000 where the ARM processor is being removed and replaced with an RISC-V processor which is apparently more robust and capable of being hardened against the most extreme conditions that NASA will expose it to in deep space applications. Vorago state:

"A successful outcome to this project will result in a radiation-hardened RISC-V SoC IC that can be qualified for space flight and provide NASA with a state-of-the-art fault-tolerant solution for missions across all Science Mission Directorate divisions. Applications will include miniaturized instruments and subsystems that must operate in harsh environments, interplanetary CubeSats and SmallSats, outer planet instruments and heliophysics missions to harsh radiation environments."

The following is a description of RISC-V:

RISC-V

CPU

Description

Description

RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture based on established reduced instruction set computer principles. Unlike most other ISA designs, the RISC-V ISA is provided under open source licenses that do not require fees to use.

Open: Yes, and royalty free

Bits: 32; 64; 128

Endianness: Little

Designed by: University of California, Berkeley

• Silicon Space Technology Corporation

  1501 South MoPac Expressway, Suite 350

  Austin, TX 78746

  Garry Nash (631) 559-1550

  20-1-H6.22-4509 ARC

  CNN RNN Processor

• Silicon Space Technology Corporation

  1501 South MoPac Expressway, Suite 350

  Austin, TX 78746

  Garry Nash (631) 559-1550

  20-1-Z2.02-4527 GSFC

  NN_Co-Processor

• Silicon Space Technology Corporation

  1501 South MoPac Expressway, Suite 350

  Austin, TX 78746

  Garry Nash (631) 559-1550

  20-1-S3.08-4526 LaRC

  Fault-Tolerant RISC-V SoC