Performance Comparison of Academic and Commercial RISC-V Systems-on-Chip
Stergiopoulos, Andreas (2025)
2025
Tietotekniikan DI-ohjelma - Master's Programme in Information Technology
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2025-10-21
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202510199988
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202510199988
Tiivistelmä
Evaluating the performance of the system one is designing is a critical part of the engineering process. This thesis aims to evaluate the single-core performance of the RISC-V High-Performance Computing SubSystem (HPC-SS) application-class processor CVA6 (formerly Ariane) of Headsail, the third System-on-Chip (SoC) designed by the SoC Hub consortium in Tampere University.
The PIC64GX Curiosity from Microchip Technology was the main board selected to compete against Headsail. Additionally, Raspberry Pi 4B board was also used as a common reference point for both RISC-V boards. For the comparisons two workloads were selected, the well-established CoreMark synthetic benchmark was used, along with a C implementation of the Canny Edge Detector image processing algorithm.
The results indicate that Headsail’s CVA6 core reached a CoreMark score of 1.98 CoreMarks per megahertz, compared to 2.34 for the PIC64GX Curiosity board and 2.1 for the CVA6′s design specification. For the same workload, Headsail executed 12% less instructions per second compared to the same board. When it comes to the Canny Edge Detector benchmark, Headsail performed at least 55% slower than PIC64GX and executed at least 48% instructions per cycle less compared to PIC64GX Curiosity, while the Raspberry Pi 4B outperformed both boards by at least 50% on both workloads.
The PIC64GX Curiosity from Microchip Technology was the main board selected to compete against Headsail. Additionally, Raspberry Pi 4B board was also used as a common reference point for both RISC-V boards. For the comparisons two workloads were selected, the well-established CoreMark synthetic benchmark was used, along with a C implementation of the Canny Edge Detector image processing algorithm.
The results indicate that Headsail’s CVA6 core reached a CoreMark score of 1.98 CoreMarks per megahertz, compared to 2.34 for the PIC64GX Curiosity board and 2.1 for the CVA6′s design specification. For the same workload, Headsail executed 12% less instructions per second compared to the same board. When it comes to the Canny Edge Detector benchmark, Headsail performed at least 55% slower than PIC64GX and executed at least 48% instructions per cycle less compared to PIC64GX Curiosity, while the Raspberry Pi 4B outperformed both boards by at least 50% on both workloads.