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$70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

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Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#51

Post by klelatti »

jbverschoor wrote: post #42
klelatti wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This emphasis on price is a bit misleading imho. Arm had revenues of less than $800m in the last reported quarter and there were 8 billion Arm cores shipped. So that’s less than 10c per core. And that’s not the fee for the ISA it’s the total cost of licensing the core. So if you’re expecting a big cost saving on the end user price from the ISA being open source then you’ll be likely to be disappointed. More important…

I don’t think apple had to pay fees

I think that’s an urban myth. They (and Acorn) had to pay fees in the early days of Arm and no reason why that would change.

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#52

Post by HopenHeyHi »

viraptor wrote: post #40
HopenHeyHi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about licensing costs just the final total cost. And I absolutely don't care that it is "politically nonaligned", bah. I care because David Patterson is a badass who was right about everything. :)

> And I absolutely don't care that it is "politically nonaligned", bah. You don't until you do. Like all the corps which need to replace the Huawei tech unexpectedly.

[flagged]

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#53

Post by classichasclass »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #43
classichasclass wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes an ISA "modern" and why are ISAs that aren't, bad per se?

They have many op codes that bloat the instruction set, that need to be broken apart to fit into a multi-scalar design. This is over head that takes of silicon space. This is especially painful with multi-core designs since each core needs this. They may have memory models that make guarantees that are insignificantly secure or impede optimisation. There is something about condition codes vs explicit checks that made…

I don't dispute that legacy cruft is a problem, but I don't see how "not modern" (which still isn't defined) necessarily means legacy cruft. ARM or MIPS aren't especially recent in ISA terms, but I think most would agree each has less cruft in it than x86, for example.

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#54

Post by snvzz »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #32
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how much work/how long will it take before the kernel is not a fork/everything is upstreamed. 12 months? also, on my raspberry pi i at least stood a chance of running a headless chrome for some silly scrape job i had. RISC-V pretty much guarantees that's not the case, right?

RISC-V is unlikely to have native support from proprietary applications, if that's what you're asking. That said, I would be shocked if the open source chromium doesn't run on it either now or soon.

Got a VisionFive 2.

I can confirm both chromium and firefox run.

They even have javascript JIT, so the performance is good.

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#55

Post by snvzz »

nfriedly wrote: post #24

I love that RISC-V is starting to take off! I'm curious about standardization of the rest of the system - the way x86 operating systems more or less work on any x86 machine, whereas ARM seems to basically require a device-specific OS image for every single device. Is there any work going into addressing that and making RISK-V more like x86 and less like ARM systems?

Yes. ISA profiles (like RVA22) and platform profiles[0].

RISC-V is in a much better position than ARM and x86 already, because this is well underway and the boot specs have been available for years now.

In ARM, there was too little, too late. Most vendors do not follow the relevant specs.

As for the PC, the platform became so by accident (IBM PC clones happened) and there's of course a serious amount of historical cruft.

0. https://github.com/riscv/riscv-platform-specs/blob/main/risc...

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#56

Post by snvzz »

whitehexagon wrote: post #44
genmud wrote: post #13

I really like Pine64, this is really nice to see! The coolest part IMHO is they are including an PCIe x1 slot, right on the board. I feel like RISC V has really started to pick up momentum over the last year or two, which is awesome to see. There have also been a bunch of tiny RISC V softcores for FPGAs too.

>they are including an PCIe x1 slot They list an NVMe SSD adapter board with PCIe x4, I wonder if that works together and can be booted from? I know with my RPi getting away from SD card boot made a huge difference.

VisionFive 2 (same SoC, has been available for months) has a NVMe slot instead of the PCIe slot.

It's still possible (with an adapter) to use PCIe cards.

It is already possible (with current u-boot patchset) to boot from NVMe. It has been possible for months to have root on NVMe.

It is indeed much faster than your average SD card.

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#57

Post by nfriedly »

snvzz wrote: post #55
nfriedly wrote: post #24

I love that RISC-V is starting to take off! I'm curious about standardization of the rest of the system - the way x86 operating systems more or less work on any x86 machine, whereas ARM seems to basically require a device-specific OS image for every single device. Is there any work going into addressing that and making RISK-V more like x86 and less like ARM systems?

Yes. ISA profiles (like RVA22) and platform profiles[0]. RISC-V is in a much better position than ARM and x86 already, because this is well underway and the boot specs have been available for years now. In ARM, there was too little, too late. Most vendors do not follow the relevant specs. As for the PC, the platform became so by accident (IBM PC clones happened) and there's of course a serious amount of historical cr…

Cool, thank you for the info!

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#58

Post by snvzz »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #50
bullen wrote: post #25

So this is the same SoC as the Vision Five 2?

Yes. However the board is different and offer different features. I'm quite interested in seeing a complete comparison and wonder about exactly who will contribute upstream support for what and how that's shared between them. It's all very unclear to me.

https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#59

Post by snvzz »

classichasclass wrote: post #31
haunter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

x86 is the past, but ARM is proprietary. RISC-V is the open source answer (there is SPARC but it's much older and never gained enough traction + Power/PowerPC became open source too but it's also not a modern ISA)

What makes an ISA "modern" and why are ISAs that aren't, bad per se?

Refer to RISC-V Reader[0].

0. https://www.amazon.com/RISC-V-Reader-Open-Architecture-Atlas...

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#60

Post by brucehoult »

gary_0 wrote: post #47
zwieback wrote: post #20

Since most of us don't design CPUs or micros, does it matter much whether it's RISC-V vs ARM? In other words, is there any way to contribute in the RISC-V space and gain an advantage? I can see how it could work out for Intel or Nvidia but for an end-user I can't see how I would jump away from the architecture I've spent the last 10 years on.

To the end user, it won't matter much either way, because most open source software already compiles and runs just fine on RISC-V; there are plans for projects like Chromium and Android to fully support RISC-V. RISC-V is on a trajectory to "just work". However, what does matter is that the RISC-V ISA will be cheaper and more flexible for device manufacturers to use. That's why it's superior to ARM and has already par…

10 billion as at the middle of last year. And Qualcomm alone had shipped 650 million of them.
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