Reference Design

A Reference Design (RD) is a collection of resources to provide a representative view of typical compute subsystems that can be designed and implemented using specific generations of Arm IP.

Specifically, Neoverse reference designs provide resources with best practices on how to integrate a Neoverse compute subsystem within a larger SoC. These compute subsystems are targeted at addressing requirements for applications in the cloud-to-edge infrastructure markets.

Neoverse products are categorized as follows:

  • Neoverse V-Series: Maximum Performance

  • Neoverse N-Series: Scale Out Performance

  • Neoverse E-Series: Efficient Throughput

Refer to Arm Neoverse to learn more about the intendend use cases for this products.

The Neoverse reference designs are also available as fixed virtual platform models and when used with a software stack, they provide a way to explore the features available in the reference design compute subsystem through software.

We provide a companion software stack for each of the Neoverse reference designs and the source code can be found in Arm’s Gitlab repository, located at https://gitlab.arm.com/infra-solutions/reference-design

This documentation lists the available reference designs, the features each support and how to interact with them.

Note

A reference design is also referred to as platform.

Table below provides the user an overview of Neoverse reference designs, and their current status.

Platform

Status

RD-V3 Cfg2

Active

RD-V3 Cfg1

Active

RD-V3

Active

RD-V2

Maintenance

RD-N2 Cfg3

Maintenance

RD-N2 Cfg2

Maintenance

RD-N2 Cfg1

Maintenance

RD-N2

Maintenance

RD-V1

Legacy

RD-V1 MC

Legacy

RD-N1 Edge

Legacy

RD-N1 Edge X2

Legacy

SGI-575

Legacy

Visit the Getting Started chapter to learn how to setup an host machine to download, compile and execute a platform feature (i.e.: boot an OS), on a fixed virtual platform.

For questions about the Neoverse Reference Design platform software stack, write to support@arm.com.