SiFive has officially launched the BigSky SF 2U870, marking the arrival of the worlds first enterprise grade 2U rackmount server built on the RISC V architecture. The development platform combines 32 high performance CPU cores with native support for standard corporate Linux distributions. It also brings confirmed support for running Nvidia CUDA software straight out of the box.
Under the hood, the server runs on 32 P870 D processor cores operating at a clock speed of 2.0GHz. The platform fully adheres to the RVA23 standard, giving developers a stable foundation to build and deploy software for large scale compute environments. Memory is handled by 256GB of fast DDR5 5600, while storage needs are covered by 2 U.2 NVMe solid state drives offering 7.68TB of capacity each.
Connectivity and expansion options are extensive for a 2U chassis. The motherboard provides 64 lanes of PCIe Gen5 alongside 4 lanes of PCIe Gen3, giving engineers plenty of bandwidth for high speed accelerators and expansion cards. Network communication is handled through an OCP 3.0 adapter supporting 10Gb and 25Gb speeds to fit into standard data center racks without specialized cabling.
The biggest development milestone comes from a direct collaboration with Nvidia. The two companies are working together to bring the CUDA programming model to RISC V silicon while preparing future hardware to use NVLink Fusion interconnects. SiFive confirmed that it has already executed CUDA code on the BigSky platform, bridging a massive software gap that previously kept RISC V hardware out of mainstream artificial intelligence workflows.
