SiFive has introduced the SiFive BigSky SF-2U870, a rackable 2U RISC-V datacenter development platform aimed at accelerating software porting, workload optimization, and system validation for RISC-V server deployments. SiFive said lead customers are already running workloads on deployed BigSky systems, spanning hyperscaler, software, and major SoC hardware leaders.

The BigSky SF-2U870 is fully compliant with the RVA23 standard and is intended to reduce the need for custom porting work when bringing enterprise software environments to RISC-V. Out of the box, the platform supports standard enterprise Linux distributions including Canonical Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Red Hat RHEL10.

Hardware configuration

SiFive lists the BigSky SF-2U870 platform with 32 P870-D cores at 2.0 GHz, 256 GB of DDR5-5600 memory, and expansion that includes four PCIe Gen5 x16 slots (64 lanes total) plus PCIe Gen3 x4. Storage is specified as a 3.84 TB U.2 NVMe data SSD, and networking as a 10/25Gb OCP 3.0 NIC. SiFive also calls out support for an x16 double-wide GPU.

CUDA and GPU-centric workflows

SiFive is working with NVIDIA to port CUDA to SiFive-based RISC-V hardware and to integrate NVLink Fusion into future SiFive platforms. As a current milestone, SiFive said it now has CUDA running on the P870-D-powered BigSky platform and described the system as being able to act as a head node for LLM workloads running on NVIDIA GPUs.

For data center engineers evaluating RISC-V beyond embedded use cases, a rackable 2U development server with mainstream Linux support is a practical step: it gives teams something they can cable, provision, and integrate into existing lab workflows for porting and validation work, rather than treating RISC-V solely as an SoC exercise.

Patrick Little, chairman and CEO of SiFive, said, “With BigSky, we have delivered a powerful turnkey server platform designed to accelerate development of customer datacenter workloads and software on the RISC-V open standard.” Brian “Redbeard” Harrington, strategist in the CTO organization at Red Hat, said, “Getting RHEL 10 running on SiFive’s BigSky platform isn’t just a validation exercise, it’s proof that we’re moving from the ‘theoretical’ phase into production-grade reality.”

SiFive said the platforms are available today and are being produced in limited quantities.

Source: SiFive