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Orange Pi RV2 is a single-board PC with an 8-core RISC-V processor

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11–20 of 48 posts

Re: Orange Pi RV2 is a single-board PC with an 8-core RISC-V processor

#12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they somehow released a SBC without telling us what processor it contains. It seems to be the same one as the BananaPi BPI-F3, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/RISCV/comments/1j6c6xz/orange_pi_rv...

As per the article: "The biggest difference between the two boars is that the Orange Pi RV has a 1.5 GHz StarFive JH7110 quad-core processor, while the new Orange Pi RV2 has a an octa-core Ky X1 chip with a 2 TOPS AI accelerator." The link you posted goes to the exact same board as in the article.

https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-F3/SpacemiT_K1

Re: Orange Pi RV2 is a single-board PC with an 8-core RISC-V processor

#13
post #2

I can not find infos about the Vector-extensions ? Is this cpu/board suitable to test the RISC-V Vector extensions ? thx for any insights..

It seems likely to be the same as this chip, so yes. https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-F3/SpacemiT_K1

Re: Orange Pi RV2 is a single-board PC with an 8-core RISC-V processor

#15
I was excited about Orange Pi ARM but they made an idiotic boot loader that always uses the SD when any SD is present. I think that's unacceptable for an "embedded" thing. This board also has a USB port where plugging in something it doesn't like takes down that entire bus until a reboot.

It's cool to see RISC-V, but I'd go with a different company.

Re: Orange Pi RV2 is a single-board PC with an 8-core RISC-V processor

#17

I was excited about Orange Pi ARM but they made an idiotic boot loader that always uses the SD when any SD is present. I think that's unacceptable for an "embedded" thing. This board also has a USB port where plugging in something it doesn't like takes down that entire bus until a reboot. It's cool to see RISC-V, but I'd go with a different company.

Why is that unacceptable?

Re: Orange Pi RV2 is a single-board PC with an 8-core RISC-V processor

#18
post #2

I can not find infos about the Vector-extensions ? Is this cpu/board suitable to test the RISC-V Vector extensions ? thx for any insights..

It has a JH7110 onboard. From what I can tell, all of the vector processing is in dedicated hardware subsystems, not individual vector instructions.

We're still very early in the RISC V ecosystem, so most of the processors in production pre-date current standardizations, which requires applications to target specific silicon. To add insult to injury, those individual processors are relatively new, so the dedicated image processing and vector/tensor hardware doesn't have much support yet.

Re: Orange Pi RV2 is a single-board PC with an 8-core RISC-V processor

#19
post #14

Will this run off the mainline kernel? Or will require strange patches from somewhere? Half the problem with orange pi is lack of main Linux distribution support.

All my (ARM) Orange Pi boards run Armbian just fine. This one, of course, is unlikely to, but I'm curious to see what it ships with.

Re: Orange Pi RV2 is a single-board PC with an 8-core RISC-V processor

#20
post #16

This hardware is very interesting (RISC-V). Is the hardware open and simple enough I can reasonably run a custom assembly written mini-kernel?

The StarFive JH7110 should be fine for that, but there's some lower-power hardware that's even better for your use case.

The Bouffalo Labs BL808 and Sophgo SG2000 series are both asymmetric multiprocessor SoCs that allow you to run a full OS, such as Linux, on one core, and run bare metal on the other. Unlike symmetric multiprocessing, you aren't just running a premptable thread on a spare core, but you get full control of the core, with direct GPIO access and a mailbox for messaging the OS core.

You can set up a development environment in Linux, on the faster core, and compile and run your application on the smaller core, for really fast development and debugging.

Check out the Ox64 and Oz64 boards from Pine64 or the Duo series from Milk-V, for cheap breakout boards using those processors.

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