How does this thing stack up against the Pine64's Ox64?
The linked system uses the same SoC as the Pine64 STAR64, so it will be a lot faster than a Pine64 Ox64, the Milk-V Duo is similar to the Ox64.
Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
41–50 of 79 posts
Re: Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wish there are some i.MX SBC You can buy a Toradex, Variscite or PHYTEC module and pop a binary distro like Debian in there very easily. Disclosure: I work for one of the companies above.
I wish those SOM vendors can produce smaller and cheaper carrier boards with their popular SOM installed, basically becomes a SBC with SOM, so I can start with them before buying more SOMs down the road. RPi did the right way in my opinion: its (cheap) SBC format gains attention widely, then it started to sell its own SOM in large volumes.
We (as an industry) do produce some smaller SoMs. Long are gone the days of gigantic EVKs with a thousand interfaces, but it's costly compared to RPi, because of scale and all the certifications we make our hardware go through.
Re: Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
#43The cores still lack bitmanip/clz/ctz/clmul. :(
Re: Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
#44How does it boot? Or is RISC-V going to follow the same problems as the ARM SBC system where each board has an obscure and unique boot process meaning images need to be carefully pre-built with who knows what installed for each board.
>is RISC-V going to follow the same problems as the ARM SBC system where each board has an obscure and unique boot process meaning images need to be carefully pre-built with who knows what installed for each board.
No. Instead, RISC-V standardized the boot process early on, avoiding that situation.
Re: Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Different board, same company
This MILK-V reposts are getting terious. Three new RISC-V boards, competing with forms of mATX (Pioneer), Pi Zero (Duo), and Pi (Mars). Pioneer[0][1][2][5], Duo [2][3][7][8], Mars [4][5][6] (and now this) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36009946 (73pts, 14 comments) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064138 (2pts, 0 comments) [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064183 (18pts, 2 comments) [3…
Thanks for the links!
Re: Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
#46there are so many SBCs these days. if you use them for hobby projects, many of them are fine. if you ever want to convert your project to something commercial, I would still consider raspberry pi and beaglebone instead based on software maturity and community support and their ecosystem at large. I really like NXP's i.MX6/8/9 chips, I wish there are some i.MX SBCs as popular as RPi and Beagles, for both hobby and com…
> if you ever want to convert your project to something commercial, I would still consider raspberry pi and beaglebone Last time I checked, Broadcom forced you to integrate their compute modules into your product because there was no way they would sell their CPUs alone, no matter how many of them one would be willing to buy. That is not normal in the industrial world. As an example, the Allwinner H3 used in a lot of…
It depends on your definition of "normal". A lot of high-end chips are completely unavailable on the open market, with manufacturers often not even willing to publish a product brief - let alone a datasheet. Try finding a Displayport MST hub chip, for example!
Things are indeed very different for the RP2040. They are widely available in both small and large quantities, and have excellent documentation publicly available. Alas, they are not SoCs!
Re: Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of commercial projects based on SBCs are relatively niche. It's very common to see things like lighting controllers, hobbyist stuff, etc, that's in the run size of 500 at the very most, basically be a raspberry pi with a custom hat in a custom plastic case. That can sustain a medium sized business. Designing and fabbing your own boards doesn't always make sense until you're on a version 2, or 3.
use CM4 modules with your own carrier board makes sense when you're building 500+. I read somewhere if you're building more than 10,000 devices, it's better to design the whole PCB board on your own. Before that volume, using SOM modules for time to market could be more reasonable.
10.000 probably isn't even enough to get Broadcom to reply to your emails. Good luck getting your hands on the required documentation, let alone the actual chips!
Re: Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
use CM4 modules with your own carrier board makes sense when you're building 500+. I read somewhere if you're building more than 10,000 devices, it's better to design the whole PCB board on your own. Before that volume, using SOM modules for time to market could be more reasonable.
10.000 probably isn't even enough to get Broadcom to reply to your emails. Good luck getting your hands on the required documentation, let alone the actual chips!
true,never liked Broadcom myself,wish RPi picked some different cpu from companies that are more open source friendly.
Re: Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
#49there are so many SBCs these days. if you use them for hobby projects, many of them are fine. if you ever want to convert your project to something commercial, I would still consider raspberry pi and beaglebone instead based on software maturity and community support and their ecosystem at large. I really like NXP's i.MX6/8/9 chips, I wish there are some i.MX SBCs as popular as RPi and Beagles, for both hobby and com…
There are quite a few manufacturers who offer NXP ARM SoC based modules. Variscite, Compulab, and SolidRun just to name a few.
Re: Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC
#50there are so many SBCs these days. if you use them for hobby projects, many of them are fine. if you ever want to convert your project to something commercial, I would still consider raspberry pi and beaglebone instead based on software maturity and community support and their ecosystem at large. I really like NXP's i.MX6/8/9 chips, I wish there are some i.MX SBCs as popular as RPi and Beagles, for both hobby and com…
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