Puppy: An Open and Silicon-Validated RISC-V Microcontroller as a Foundation for a National Embedded Systems Platform
TL;DR
Puppy, a RISC-V-based System-on-Chip (SoC) targeting energy-efficient edge artificial intelligence (AI) applications, is presented as a validated and accessible solution for intelligent embedded systems.
Abstract
This paper presents the silicon validation and benchmarking of Puppy, a RISC-V-based System-on-Chip (SoC) targeting energy-efficient edge artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Built on the PULPissimo platform and enhanced with Xpulpv2 instructions, Puppy integrates a hierarchical memory subsystem, a micro Direct Memory Acess (uDMA) engine, a full set of standard I/O interfaces, and a dedicated cryptographic processing engine. The fabricated chip, implemented in 65 nm CMOS, achieved 3.1 CoreMark/MHz, demonstrating competitive energy efficiency among RISC-V microcontrollers. AI workloads using PULPNN-optimized instructions yielded a 8.5× improvement in multiply-accumulate (MAC) instructions per cycle, confirming the effectiveness of the architectural enhancements. In addition, the platform fully supports the Zephyr Real-Time Operating System and provides full integration with the Arduino IDE, enabling rapid software prototyping and educational deployment. These results establish Puppy as a validated and accessible solution for intelligent embedded systems.