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DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

deepcomputing.io

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Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

#51

Post by tholm »

nrp wrote: post #32
MostlyStable wrote: post #17

A 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 t…

We have gotten inbound interest from other Mainboard makers too, at least one of which is pretty far along on a design.

That's awesome to hear! I'm really excited to see the framework ecosystem grow.

Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

#52

Post by m463 »

MostlyStable wrote: post #17

A 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 t…

This is basically similar to what made the IBM PC successful. They opened up the bus architecture, and the market for add-in cards exploded.

(being IBM, they later tried to "upgrade" to a locked-down microchannel bus, but it happily didn't go anywhere)

other things got standardized (motherboards, power supplies, peripherals, etc) and it has been going ~ 40 years now.

Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

#53

Post by brucehoult »

ywvcbk wrote: post #49
brucehoult wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 V…

> will cost a lot more. Presumably everyone buying this thing would already have (or need) a proper PC/Mac to use alongside it.

Maybe. Or they might only have a phone/tablet. Or an older but still totally useful machine such as that Zen 2 laptop I mentioned, which runs qemu slower than the VisionFive 2.

Also, a number of people have come unstuck by writing and testing things ONLY on qemu, and then had them fail on real hardware. For example, qemu was historically much more lenient with PMP settings than real hardware (if you didn't touch the PMU then qemu acted as if you didn't have one at all). Also anything that needs fences on real RISC-V (or Arm) hardware is likely to work even when it's incorrect on a PC that is jitting multiple instructions per RISC-V instruction and is TSO anyway. Qemu being lenient about setting up the UART (e.g. it doesn't care about baurd rate, start/stop bits etc) compared to real hardware is another example.

Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

#54

Post by trhway »

m463 wrote: post #52
MostlyStable wrote: post #17

A 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 t…

This is basically similar to what made the IBM PC successful. They opened up the bus architecture, and the market for add-in cards exploded. (being IBM, they later tried to "upgrade" to a locked-down microchannel bus, but it happily didn't go anywhere) other things got standardized (motherboards, power supplies, peripherals, etc) and it has been going ~ 40 years now.

>They opened up the bus architecture, the market for add-in cards exploded.

Price and size and overall state of tech back then didn't really allow to have several PCs in one (for some rare and pricey exceptions like PowerPC CPU extension boards, etc.). These days we can potentially have inside regular size laptop a backboard with standard bus (something like Sipeed cluster board which takes up to 7 credit card sized SoCs [1]) into which we can potentially plug various SoCs of the same or different arc. Say one SoC is RISC-V, one x86 and several SoCs with powerful NPUs - configure your laptop(cluster) for the mission at hand. Dare i say from a common bin of parts in the office (or even from public library - the SoCs are just tens of dollars nowdays, like say a game cartridge).

[1] one can imagine if the cards were inserted at angle instead of vertically https://www.amazon.com/Sipeed-Lichee-Cluster-High-Performanc...

Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

#55

Post by sylware »

Well, I need a mini server, like rpi3, ofc I will go for RISC-V (without arm, and if possible without hdmi/hardware mpeg codecs), but they are very hard to buy without big tech browsers. I may write my own mini kernel... for my mini servers.

Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

#57

Post by IshKebab »

ralmidani wrote: post #6

How 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?

There isn't really any RISC-V hardware that is fast enough that you'd want to run those big IDEs yet.

Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

#58

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #47
timschmidt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read through the article. Ryzen wins a few, and from a worse node, and with off-package dram, and a much more capable GPU.

"off-package dram" Yes, the real ARM vs. x86 discussion will come around Ryzen Max 2025Q1 with 128mb on-package dram (hope we get desktop board manufacturers to sell this).

what does 128mb on package dram help with? That seems like it's way to small to suspend to ram or anything.

Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

#59

Post by snvzz »

capitol_ wrote: post #45
usr1106 wrote: post #35

They promise Linux support. What is the situation with Rust on RISC-V? Obviously for a couple of years you haven't been able to build a somewhat complete and modern distro without a Rust compiler. However, that wasn't available everywhere outside of x86 and arm64 at the same time ( https://lwn.net/Articles/845535/ ). Has that been fully solved in the meantime?

My experience with our riscv build deamons in Debian is everything works, but there is some spurious segfaults from time to time. Check the green build matrix on this page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=alexander.kjall%40...

It is kind of amazing where the build process is[0][1].

0. https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=riscv64&...

1. https://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph-week-big.png

Re: DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

#60

Post by snvzz »

autoexecbat wrote: post #13

I really wish these CPUs had the Vector extension

I am happy that there is already a RVA22+RVV1.0 spacemiT K1/M1 as in milk-v jupiter and banana pi bpi-f3.

Relative to having nothing.

In 2025, more options will definitely pop up.

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