Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a dev board. Reason to buy it: you need a desktop that has RISC-V cpu inside.
If you want a desktop, the Pine64 Star64 is only $90 for the same spec. This is a laptop though.
Milk-V Mars 8 GB is $68.99 at Arace.
DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
11–20 of 69 posts
Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
#12other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126976
Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
#13I really wish these CPUs had the Vector extension
Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a dev board. Reason to buy it: you need a desktop that has RISC-V cpu inside.
The problem is that it's a dev board that will likely be slower than QEMU, and is missing half of the Risc-V extensions that you want to test with. (and it supports a maximum of 8gb of ram, so good luck compiling LLVM on it)
>good luck compiling LLVM on it
4 cores, thus 2GB/core. Plenty.
Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a dev board. Reason to buy it: you need a desktop that has RISC-V cpu inside.
The problem is that it's a dev board that will likely be slower than QEMU, and is missing half of the Risc-V extensions that you want to test with. (and it supports a maximum of 8gb of ram, so good luck compiling LLVM on it)
An N100 running QEMU will be slower. A machine that is faster running QEMU will cost a lot more.
For example my 6 core Zen2 laptop runs my primes benchmark (small code, long-running, the best possible case for qemu-user) 10% slower than my VisionFive 2. If you want to run a whole emulated OS then qemu-system is a lot slower than qemu-user.
My i9-13900 laptop runs the same benchmark in qemu-user 2.6x faster than the VisionFive 2, but it also costs 30x more -- or about 2x more than the Frame laptop with the JH7110 mainboard. Or 5x more than the original DC Roma laptop with the JH7110 now costs ($299).
If you want a RISC-V laptop then Frame is a very expensive way to get one. It might be higher quality, and it will be upgradable to better specs later.
Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
#16How mature is the RISC-V ecosystem for dev machines? VS Code and Jetbrains IDEs are probably not supported, but what about a setup with Fedora, Erlang, Elixir, Node, and maybe NeoVIM?
Once you exclude proprietary (jetbrains) or not-really-open (vs code) tools, it is a non-issue.
Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
#17A lot of comments are focusing on the value as a RISC-V development platform, which is obviously important, but I'm also hopeful that this presages more Framework mainboard options besides just what Framework itself offers. There is already a pretty big community offering I/O modules beyond Framework's options, but the true benefit of a Framework system is in the ability to not be locked in to only what one company things is worth the time and effort to develop. This is the first inkling that that benefit might actually come about.
Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
the price to functionality is pretty steep. 200 would seem about right for a dev board that supported rva23, but for a CPU without support for the extensions that the ecosystem is going to require it's hard to justify 200 for ~pi3 performance on an already outdated platform
The RVA23 spec has only just been ratified a couple of weeks ago. It will be a couple of years before there is hardware supporting it. A suitable RVA22+V chip (SpacemiT 8 core) has only been out on dedicated dev boards for a few months. That's probably going to be their 2025Q2 main board. Their 2025Q4 main board will be the first high performance RVA22+V one. If the chip happens ... it's struck some political (sancti…
I agree that it's a good step, it just feels like it would have been a good 2022 step or a good $50 step at the end of 2024, but it just seems like too little too late to be worth the price.
Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
#19I really wish these CPUs had the Vector extension
So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the CPUs that are given us.
These CPU cores were announced three years before the Vector extension spec was ready.
Check the updates coming next year.
Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that it's a dev board that will likely be slower than QEMU, and is missing half of the Risc-V extensions that you want to test with. (and it supports a maximum of 8gb of ram, so good luck compiling LLVM on it)
>good luck compiling LLVM on it 4 cores, thus 2GB/core. Plenty.
I regularly get OOMs at 16 GB/core doing debug builds. LLVM is practically a memory stress test.