[Introduction]Shenzhen, China – Recently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that it will build the next generation of high-performance aerospace computing chips based on the RISC-V architecture. In fact, RISC-V, which is based on its advantages of low power consumption, low cost, flexibility, scalability, safety and reliability, has already landed in many fields before the sky. Not long ago, Yuefang Technology, an active co-builder of the RISC-V ecosystem and a leader in high-end industrial IoT chip solutions, released the industry’s first RISC-V SoC chip NB2 targeting high-end industrial applications. Based on the application cases of NB2, it covers many fields such as smart logistics, smart city, data security, etc., which has attracted widespread attention. On the basis of solving the independent and controllable problems of high-end industrial applications in China, this series of solutions fully conforms to the national development trend of dual carbon and new infrastructure. So how does NB2 apply and help solve the “crux of the industry”? At this press conference, many partners of Yuefang Technology elaborated and discussed.

For example, smart logistics is no longer equivalent to the “express delivery industry” in the traditional impression, but one of the key “infrastructures” related to national security. With the objective needs of industrial upgrading, the current logistics industry has entered the crossroads of major changes, and intelligent operation has become its next outlet. To achieve digital operations and generate intelligent decision-making, computing is required. “Especially in edge computing, only when intelligent decision-making is completed at the edge can it better meet the needs of logistics scenarios.” Wang Jinfan, founder of Liansheng Technology, an industry leader in intelligent operations in the new logistics industry, explained.

Figure 1. Wang Jinfan, founder of Liansheng Technology, introduced the smart logistics solution and the application of NB2 in it

In cooperation with Yuefang, Liansheng Technology has created a corresponding smart logistics solution based on RISC-V products, including the perception interaction layer, IoT platform and upper-level decision-making system. In the perception and interaction layer, based on Yuefang BF products, they interact with real production factors through smart labels, smart cars, etc. The focus of the IoT platform layer is to allow the edge side to complete some decisions. At this time, the chip needs to have strong computing power. Not just simple data aggregation, NB series products can be perfectly competent. Compared with other architectures, RISC-V-based chips have obvious advantages such as low power consumption, low cost, high flexibility, and high computing power. In addition, special emphasis should be placed on security: supply chain security and information security.

It is based on such a set of smart logistics solutions that Liansheng Technology has implemented a variety of specific products, such as logistics robots, intelligent sorting trolleys, intelligent gateways and the construction of sensor networks. It is reported that these solutions have been applied in actual operation scenarios and continue to be effective.

Of course, the implementation of smart logistics is only the “tip of the iceberg” of new digital infrastructure. To promote high-quality economic development, digitalization and low-carbonization are a pair of closely coupled “development communities”. Under the strategic background of “building” and “carbon reduction”, the transformation of the energy system is particularly critical if the country’s dual carbon goals are to be achieved.

At present, with the rise of clean energy to the “main role”, the energy structure of the power grid has undergone tremendous changes. However, due to the volatility and indirectness of clean energy, coupled with the increasing demand on the load side of the power grid, how to form an interaction between the load side equipment and the power grid has become a big challenge.

“We proposed the concept of a virtual power plant, using information technology to aggregate air conditioners, electric vehicles, energy storage systems, etc., to jointly participate in power regulation,” said Mr. Yao Guofeng, a technical expert at the Energy Internet Technology Research Institute of China Electric Power Research Institute. “The edge intelligent gateway based on Yuefang NB2 truly realizes flexible interaction.”

For example, today, there are more than 100 million smart air conditioners in my country. If they are aggregated together and adjusted reasonably, it is expected to generate 120 million kilowatts of adjustable resources, which is equivalent to five Three Gorges Hydropower Stations. The peak load is 140 million kilowatts, which makes a huge contribution to the stable power supply of the country.

Figure 2. Yao Guofeng, Energy Internet Technology Research Institute, China Electric Power Research Institute, explains the NB2-based building carbon reduction solution and the corresponding intelligent edge gateway Demo Display

Based on this set of intelligent edge gateways jointly developed by the Electric Power Research Institute, it is applied to building carbon reduction solutions, such as building control systems, etc., and is connected to the power grid in the mode of stock + increment without affecting the user’s use and experience. Participate in regulation on the interactive platform. This will not only help power applications in smart buildings, industrial parks and other scenarios to evolve towards low carbon, but also help local governments and even the entire country to achieve guaranteed power consumption by the power grid.

The big goal of Double Carbon is giving birth to an urgent need for edge intelligent processors. NB2 is indeed “like a duck to water” in such high-end industrial applications, but various applications are inseparable from a basic base – safety.

Yuefang has been actively building security dimension capabilities since its establishment. As a strategic partner of Yuefang, Mr. Xu Gang, the co-founder and CTO of Molian Technology, revealed, “During the initial cooperation with Yuefang, Molian has realized access to blockchain from IoT devices based on Yuefang BF2. Ability.” After collecting data, the data must be calculated while protecting the original privacy. At this time, the cooperation between Molian and Yuefang to develop a confidential computing board based on NB2 plays a very important role. According to reports, the board has a smaller granularity, which is more convenient to provide a confidential computing environment with high flexibility and high sensitivity for edge computing scenarios, such as the application of carbon footprint monitoring.

Figure 3. Xu Gang, co-founder and CTO of Molian Technology, introduced the cooperation with Yue Fang on data security (confidential computing) and the Demo Display of the confidential computing card based on the NB2 scheme

In the application of this series of practical scenarios, Yuefang’s RISC-V-based chip products have played a huge role. Of course, some of these advantages also stem from the RISC-V architecture itself. Dr. Jiang Zhaohui, founder, CEO and CTO of Yuefang Technology, believes that “the current development status of RISC-V is the same as that of Arm ten years ago. The current shortcoming is that many people have insufficient ecological confidence in RISC-V, which also directly affects Determination to invest.” But Jiang Zhaohui also bluntly said that he is optimistic about the future development of the RISC-V ecosystem, and many institutions and companies will participate; the state attaches great importance to the RISC-V architecture; and the accelerated training of relevant talents has made RISC-V among the ranks of X86 and Arm. A three-legged world.

At the same time, thanks to the open source community of RISC-V, Yuefang has always considered how to feed back. “Any solution we provide to the community must be based on our long-term cooperation with customers, which has passed the test of time, and then feed back open source. We always maintain a cautious attitude towards technology output.” Yuan Bohu, vice president of research and development of Yuefang Technology, said.

About Yuefang Technology

Founded in 2020, LeapFive is a high-tech company focusing on the research and development of SoC chip products based on the RISC-V open source instruction set architecture. Yuefang Technology was initiated by Dr. Jiang Zhaohui, the former Google CTO. The start-up management and R&D team are mainly from Google, Intel, Samsung, Huawei, ZTE, Fiberhome and other well-known companies. The company mainly provides full-stack basic intelligent software services from operating systems to cloud platforms for industrial Internet of Things, security and other industries. of innovative applications.