We are proud to announce the launch of Milk-V Pioneer, an advanced micro ATX motherboard featuring the high-performance 64-core RISC-V CPU - SOPHON SG2042. Milk-V Pioneer aims to provide outstanding processing power and a versatile hardware platform for RISC-V developers, offering a perfect solution to meet a wide range of computing requirements, from daily tasks to demanding server applications.

Features & Specifications

Milk-V Pioneer is a groundbreaking RISC-V development platform with numerous outstanding features, including:

• Standard micro ATX form factor, compatible with mature PC industry cases and peripherals, fulfilling the DIY dream of RISC-V enthusiasts.
• High-performance local compilation and development capabilities.
• Complete development interfaces, including support for up to 128 GB memory multiple USB 3 ports, two NVMe SSD slots, wireless WiFi 6 expansion, multiple SATA ports, and standard PCIe card expansion.

These features not only seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructure but also ensure a powerful and user-friendly development experience, making Milk-V Pioneer an ideal choice for both RISC-V ecosystem enthusiasts and professionals. The launch of the Milk-V Pioneer series of products has milestone significance for the RISC-V software ecosystem, completely solving the long-standing problems of relying on virtual machines and lengthy compilation times during the OS distribution build process, and taking the entire RISC-V software ecosystem to new heights.

Our crowdfunding campaign features the micro ATX Milk-V Pioneer motherboard, as well as a pre-built Milk-V Pioneer Box that comes with dual 10G network cards and a discrete graphics card, allowing users to set up and use the system right out of the box.

Pioneer board

• Processor: SOPHON SG2042 (64 core C920, RVV 0.71)
• Memory: 4x DDR4 DIMM slots up to 128 GB RAM support
• PCI Express: 3x PCIe x16 Slot (PCIe 3.0 x8)
• Storage: 5x SATA
• Size: 24.4 x 24.4 cm
• Power: 1x standard 24 P ATX power connector
• Ethernet: 2x RJ45 2.5 G
• Wireless: 1x M.2 E KEY (PCIe 3.0 x1 + USB 2.0)
• USB:
  • 8x USB3
  • 1x USB header for front panel (2x USB 3.0)
• Other:
  • 1x misc header for front panel power, reset, LED, etc.
  • 1x SPI Flash for BIOS
  • 1x MicroSD card for recovery or OS loading
  • 2x M.2 M-key 2280(PCIe 3.0 x4)
  • 1x eMMC module connector

Pioneer Box

• Motherboard: 1x Milk-V Pioneer board
• Memory: 128 GB 3200 MHz DDR4
• Storage: 1x 1 TB PCIe 3.0 SSD
• Ethernet: 1x Intel X520-T2 network card with 2x 10 Gbps RJ45 ports
• Graphics: 1x AMD R5 230 graphics card with HDMI, VGA, and DVI
• Power: 1x MSI A350 350 W power supply
• Cooling: 1x cooler with PWM Fan up to 2300 RPM supporting up to 160-W D-TDP
• Enclosure: Slim, white enclosure with handle

Power by SG2042

The SOPHON SG2042 server chip is based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) and features a 64-core server-grade chip designed to meet high-performance computing needs. It offers scalability, flexibility, and customization, with integrated circuits including high-speed cache (L3Cache 64 MB), memory controllers (4 DDR4-3200), network interfaces, and PCI Express® controllers (x32 PCIe Gen 4.0), supporting general-purpose operating systems such as Linux. The SG2042 has a clock speed of 2 GHz and a design consisting of 16 clusters, each containing 4 RISC-V cores, with each core featuring L1-D 64 KB and L1-I 64 KB. Each cluster shares a design of L2 1 MB. The L3 System cache has a capacity of 64 MB. The SG2042 supports interconnect between two chips via CCIX and has 4 DDR4-3200 controllers, supporting RDIMM, ECC, and UDIMM. The chip also has 32x PCIe Gen 4.0 interfaces, integrated eMMC 5.1, SDIO 3.0, SPI x2, I2C x4, UART x4, and gigabit Ethernet MAC.

The compiler suite ZCC has announced full support for the SOPHON SG2042 RISC-V server chip. This toolset supports agile chip design, development, and validation, as well as comprehensive RISC-V software development, debugging, simulation, performance analysis, and software/hardware co-simulation and validation. In SPECint 2006 server benchmark testing, the ZCC compiler can improve the single-core performance of SG2042 by an average of more than 15%. In some commonly used automatic vectorization performance tests of AI operator libraries, the zcc automatic vectorization operator library shows an average improvement of 18% compared to handwritten RVV builtin operator libraries, and up to 100 times better performance than open-source GCC and LLVM RISC-V compilers. With ZCC’s OpenMP automatic parallelization support for SG2042, using the high-performance ZCC compiler can not only achieve the best single-core and multi-core performance but also significantly reduce the maintenance costs of RISC-V function libraries and AI operator libraries.

Fedora 38 has been compiled and supports Milk-V Pioneer Edition. It can run LXDE, XFCE and GNOME desktop environments with stable performance. It also has a rich set of applications, including Podman, LibreOffice, Firefox, media players, and even many classic 3D games on Linux, making it indistinguishable from a Linux PC. In addition, Fedora systems can also run ROS2 systems, laying the foundation for more future applications in artificial intelligence and robotics. Currently, Milk-V Pioneer uses Linuxboot to boot into Fedora. By the end of Q2 2023, it is planned to start using UEFI (EDK2), and by the end of Q3, ACPI is planned to replace device tree to boot the Linux system. During this time, the Fedora image will continue to be updated with the addition of software packages needed by the developer community.

About SOPHGO

SOPHGO is dedicated to becoming a global leader in providing general computing power. Focusing on the research, development, and promotion of AI and RISC-V CPU computing power products, SOPHGO has built a comprehensive application matrix covering "cloud, edge, and endpoint" scenarios with its self-developed products at the core. SOPHGO provides computing power products and holistic solutions for various applications, including urban brains, smart computing centers, intelligent security, smart transportation, safe production, industrial quality inspection, and smart terminals.

About MilkV

MilkV brings together a group of enthusiastic and experienced embedded engineers who are passionate about RISC-V technology and filled with infinite longing and aspiration. As a company focusing on the RISC-V open-source ecosystem, we are committed to sparking a technological revolution and leading the global technology trend. We believe that promoting the widespread application of more RISC-V products will unleash the unlimited creativity of developers and encourage them to devote themselves to the construction of the RISC-V ecosystem. We not only showcase the outstanding performance of RISC-V technology to the world but also join hands with global developers to explore the boundless possibilities of future technology. We look forward to seeing RISC-V products become highlights in the field of technology through the joint efforts of numerous developers. Join us in our quest and help create a brilliant future for RISC-V together, and support our campaign today!