SiFive HiFive Premier P550 Review: High RISC

Plenty of RISC for developers

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HiFive Premier P550
(Image credit: © Tom's Hardware)

Tom's Hardware Verdict

RISC-V developers will love the power of this board, and so they should! If you’re not into RISC-V development and want a powerful SBC, grab a Raspberry Pi 5.

Pros

  • +

    Uses a standard PC form factor

  • +

    Runs cool under stress

  • +

    Onboard PCIe slot

  • +

    Powerful RISC-V development platform

Cons

  • -

    Expensive

  • -

    Fan is always on

  • -

    No NVMe drive option

  • -

    Needs a PC power supply

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RISC-V, the open source ISA, has made some great progress over the years, and the new HiFive Premier P550 from SiFive is claimed to be “The Highest Performance RISC-V CPU Development Board in the World” and for $400 it better be. The unit that I have on the bench is the $399 16GB RAM model, but if you want / need more RAM, for $499 you can grab a 32GB model. Also, don’t forget to add your sales tax.

HiFive Premier P550

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
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Les Pounder
Les Pounder
Associate Editor

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    Thanks for the review! It's so unfortunate Intel's Horse Creek didn't reach the market, as that would've been a comparable option with better PCIe connectivity, probably 2 years earlier. Maybe faster clock speeds, too.

    The article said:
    Yeah we have a SATA 3 connector, and that is nearly as fast as PCIe Gen 3, so you can use that if you wish.
    Uh, nope. Each lane of PCIe 3.0 is good for about 1000 MB/s, whereas SATA 3 is only good for ~560 MB/s. Maybe your brain is stuck in Pi land, where the norm is a single lane of PCIe 2.0?

    The article said:
    How do we power the board? Via the DC barrel jack? Nope. We need a 24 pin ATX power supply
    Yeah, for a board like this, that is pretty annoying. A lot of these types of boards give you an option to use either ATX power or a DC barrel jack.

    A PicoPSU is an option, if you're not trying to use a Thin Mini-ITX case and one that has a spot for mounting the barrel connector.
    https://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-160-XT
    The article said:
    Lastly there is a power button which spins the fans and powers up the board.
    Where? Is this via some ATX front header pins (or can those be used instead)?

    The article said:
    Geekbench 6
    LOL, the units for the HiFive board are in $ ??? If you pasted this from an Excel (or other) spreadsheet, try changing the cell type before re-pasting it.

    The article said:
    In the technical specifications, we can see that there is an Imagination AXM-8-256 GPU, but this GPU is not yet supported in software.
    But it works enough for you to get display output? Because it doesn't seem as if you're using a dGPU with it.

    The article said:
    Normally we see a big difference between the idle and stress temperatures, but with the P550 we don’t. Why?
    Perhaps, in part, because the cores are tiny and SoC is made primarily for embedded usage? That would also help explain why the I/O offering is so lackluster. Perhaps also why it seems to need soldered DRAM, instead of having a SODIMM slot.

    Other questions: Does it have a RTC battery? It doesn't look like it, from your nice pictures, but just want to confirm.
    What about connectors for front panel switches & LEDs? Again, it seems the answer is no, but had to ask.
    Is the slot on the carrier board a standard form factor?
    Do they anticipate future SoM boards being released that are slot-compatible?
    Reply
  • cheesecake1116
    The company's name is not HiFive, it's SiFive. HiFive is the name of the product line for all of SiFive's in-house systems.

    Also there is a dollar sign in front of the multi core score of the P550.
    Reply
  • cheesecake1116
    bit_user said:
    Thanks for the review! It's so unfortunate Intel's Horse Creek didn't reach the market, as that would've been a comparable option with better PCIe connectivity, probably 2 years earlier. Maybe faster clock speeds, too.


    Uh, nope. Each lane of PCIe 3.0 is good for about 1000 MB/s, whereas SATA 3 is only good for ~560 MB/s. Maybe your brain is stuck in Pi land, where the norm is a single lane of PCIe 2.0?


    Yeah, for a board like this, that is pretty annoying. A lot of these types of boards give you an option to use either ATX power or a DC barrel jack.

    A PicoPSU is an option, if you're not trying to use a Thin Mini-ITX case and one that has a spot for mounting the barrel connector.
    https://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-160-XT

    Where? Is this via some ATX front header pins (or can those be used instead)?


    LOL, the units for the HiFive board are in $ ??? If you pasted this from an Excel (or other) spreadsheet, try changing the cell type before re-pasting it.


    But it works enough for you to get display output? Because it doesn't seem as if you're using a dGPU with it.


    Perhaps, in part, because the cores are tiny and SoC is made primarily for embedded usage? That would also help explain why the I/O offering is so lackluster. Perhaps also why it seems to need soldered DRAM, instead of having a SODIMM slot.

    Other questions:Does it have a RTC battery? It doesn't look like it, from your nice pictures, but just want to confirm.
    What about connectors for front panel switches & LEDs? Again, it seems the answer is no, but had to ask.
    Is the slot on the carrier board a standard form factor?
    Do they anticipate new SoM boards being released that are slot-compatible?
    So the GPU itself does work, but the drivers are in a very very poor state. Half the time vulkaninfo just crashes.

    There is a power button on the board below the PCIe slot.

    There is a RTC battery on the bottom right corner of the board.
    Reply
  • P.Amini
    bit_user said:
    LOL, the units for the HiFive board are in $ ??? If you pasted this from an Excel (or other) spreadsheet, try changing the cell type before re-pasting it.
    Because every single point costs a lot!
    Reply
  • Peksha
    Latest article from C&C is about this board.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Peksha said:
    Latest article from C&C is about this board.
    Sorry to nit-pick, but that article uses the HiFive board & its ESWIN EIC7700X SoC to investigate the SiFive P550 cores. It's really not looking at the overall board, the way this article does - Chips & Cheese is about microarchitecture investigation, not product reviews.

    I'm sure you know all of that, but I just wanted to clarify for anyone who doesn't. Thanks for mentioning it, though!

    BTW, they mention that it's made on TSMC 12nm. That only makes me pine even more for the long lost Intel Horse Creek, made on their Intel 4 node:
    https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-demos-Horse-Creek-developer-board-with-SiFive-RISC-V-CPU-DDR5-RAM-and-PCIe-5-0-slot.661186.0.html
    Reply