🛠 Getting Started with the Sapphire RV64 Board

Objectifs

This tutorial guides you through the initial power-up of your Sapphire RV64 board. The goal is to validate the hardware integrity, establish a reliable communication link with a host computer, and confirm that the RISC-V core is operational. We will focus on physical steps and initial checks, without diving into complex programming for now. This is a crucial step for any beginner developer wanting to master the Efinix environment.

Required Hardware

• A Sapphire RV64 board (based on an Efinix Titanium, Topaz, or Trion T20+ FPGA).
• A USB-C or micro-USB cable (depending on your board's connector) for power and debugging.
• A computer with a functional USB port.
• A serial terminal software (such as PuTTY, Tera Term, or Minicom).
• Efinity 2026.1 or newer software (installed on the computer).

Steps

1. Visually inspect the board to ensure no components are damaged and connectors are clean.
2. Connect the USB cable between the Sapphire RV64 board and your computer. This connection typically provides power via the USB bus (5V) and the JTAG/Serial debug link.
3. Open your operating system's device manager to identify the new serial device (often named COMx on Windows or /dev/ttyUSBx on Linux).
4. Launch your serial terminal software. Configure the communication settings often used for RISC-V debug consoles: 115200 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity.
5. Open the serial connection. If the board is correctly programmed at the factory with test firmware, boot messages should appear immediately in the terminal.
6. If no message appears, check the LED indicators on the board. A steady green LED usually indicates correct power supply, while a blinking blue LED may signal core activity or an error depending on your specific model's documentation.
7. Open the Efinity software on your computer. Create a new empty project to verify that the software detects the Efinix FPGA via the board's integrated JTAG link.

Verification

Success in this tutorial is confirmed by three elements: the power LEDs lighting up, readable characters appearing in the serial terminal (such as "Hello World" or boot logs), and the FPGA being detected by the Efinity software. If the terminal displays garbled text, verify that the baud rate is set to 115200. If Efinity does not detect the board, ensure that USB drivers are correctly installed.

Going Further

Once the board is recognized, explore the available interfaces mentioned in the datasheet, such as GPIOs or UARTs. You can then try to compile a blink LED example provided by Efinix to understand the FPGA synthesis and programming workflow.