Introduction
MilkV's team is comprised of experienced engineers who discovered in previous projects that there are very few small, general-purpose, low-power, low-cost development boards capable of running smart home systems. Because of the high demand for the AI processing capability of the development board itself, it is difficult to choose a suitable MPU for the development of AIoT, and to solve this problem, MilkV engineers decided to make their own MPU.
Beginning
The MilkV engineers began the more detailed planning process with the initial concept in mind. We decided to build our product on the RISC-V architecture to further reduce development and production costs. On the one hand, MilkV saw it as part of our mission to advance RISC-V; on the other hand, the RISC-V architecture's ease of development, small footprint, low cost, and high efficiency allowed us to launch this product with a price/performance combination.
Bob, one of our engineers, suggested: "The requirement for multi-threaded processing capability of processors is relatively high in the field of artificial intelligence combined with embedded, and a common solution is for multiple processors to work together, with each processor responsible for one type of task. And because different systems perform different tasks at different rates of efficiency, can we make each core run a system independently of the others? This could result in increased efficiency." As a result, we employ Asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) technology.
Multiple cores running different tasks relatively independently are referred to as AMP technology. Each core may run a different operating system or bare-metal program, or a different version of the operating system. However, the system is controlled by one main core and several slave cores. This makes each core individually more efficient, without suffering too much from the negative efficiency effects of "collaboration". This relationship, like two brothers working independently but cooperatively, reminds us of the word ——Duo.
Development
The MilkV team prioritized Duo's development after refining the requirements. We thought Duo was a product that made a lot of sense for developers, and the MilkV engineers were all ecstatic.
On the hardware side, the main issue became how to improve the product's configuration and quality as much as possible while keeping costs low. We raised prices and squeezed margins repeatedly. After many rounds of testing, we finalized the version after creating several layouts. On the one hand, AMP technology is less common and more difficult to develop, and development must take into account the hardware platform and software, placing high demands on engineers; on the other hand, there is little sharing and communication between companies on AMP technology, leaving us unable to avoid falling into the trap again and again. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the engineers, the development of Duo was a complete success.
Finally,
We are overjoyed that Duo has finally become a finished product after months of collaboration. We gave one to each MilkV engineer, so the first users of Duo were our engineers. During the month of use and testing, we discovered some issues and then optimized Duo. These issues would not affect users who purchased the official version of Duo.
Every developer who has seen Duo has found it to be a very useful and cost-effective RISC-V AI MPU, and they are looking forward to using it in many of their upcoming smart home projects. We can't wait to show you Duo! We believe Duo will be ready to meet you very soon!
