The METASAT Hardware Platform: A High-Performance Multicore, AI SIMD and GPU RISC-V Platform for On-board Processing

The METASAT Horizon Europe project which is funded by the European Commission and started in January 2023, will enable model-based design methodologies in order to manage the complexity of upcoming hardware and software for space on-board processing. As a representative high performance platform for on-board processing, METASAT will design a multi-core platform featuring accelerators prototyped on an FPGA. This includes both an AI SIMD accelerator tightly integrated with the CPU, as well as a GPU. All hardware components of the METASAT platform will be open source and based on the RISC-V open ISA. In this paper, we provide an overview of the platform architecture as well as preliminary implementation decisions, current development status and early results.