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Lichee Console 4A – RISC-V mini laptop: Review, benchmarks and early issues

3.14.by

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Re: Lichee Console 4A – RISC-V mini laptop: Review, benchmarks and early issues

#111

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

the_third_wave wrote: post #99
saxonww wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time I've ever seen anyone write 'silicium' and sure enough, it's an alternative name for silicon. I wonder if this is a more common name for silicon in some other part of the world (I'm in the US). I don't think I've ever seen this spelling before today, and I'm not a young person.

It is the spelling used in e.g. the Netherlands, a country where the light metal used in aircraft goes by the name Aluminium which also happens to be the correct version [1] of the bastardised Aluminum . The word Silicon 'feels' wrong to a Dutch speaker because it makes it sound like integrated circuits are made out of the same stuff used to assemble aquariums, fake boobs and heat-resistant flexible cookware. That st…

honestly, I'd be in favor of renaming to computium. then you get to teach kids that sand is computium-dioxide!

Re: Lichee Console 4A – RISC-V mini laptop: Review, benchmarks and early issues

#112

Post by brainerazer »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #82
cjs_ac wrote: post #52

Is anyone making RISC-V SoCs outside of China? Trade restrictions have given China serious incentives to make RISC-V CPUs domesticly, unlike every other country that can just buy AMD64 and ARM chips. Given the geopolitics of the situation, while RISC-V is gaining marketshare in the microcontroller space, it looks like RISC-V will be the Chinese-bloc CPU ISA while the west sticks with what we already have.

Nvidea is now producing specific models of their products specced in a way that is currently legal to sell them to China. The US doesn't like it, so they may change the rules again. which becomes a bit of a whackamole. Sanctions like these gives China a lot more incentive for a reunification with Taiwan. Some say the fabs are rigged to blow if this was to occur. If so, it would have massive negative consequences for…

'reunification'

Re: Lichee Console 4A – RISC-V mini laptop: Review, benchmarks and early issues

#113

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #19
m00x wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's mostly a case of software not being optimized for RISC-V. The sipeed website indicates that it's much faster if the benchmarks are built with optimized toolchains. I imagine it has x64 or arm7 emulator for most builds.

Completely false. This is compared to native versions on all platforms. Supposedly TH1520 gets a small uplift when compiled for its proprietary extensions, but I haven't seen a compiler using this and it would have no bearing on application from a standard distribution. I have both 7110 and TH1520, but I'm looking forward to SiFive P670 powered SG2380 which promises to be an exciting chip.

it is a problem that the compilers for riscv are still pretty bad. it will take a few years (and more cheap risc-v dev boards) before gcc and clang actually know how to generate good code for risc-v (this is especially a problem for things like video payback and encryption that tend to be written with significant amounts of hand tuned assembly)

Re: Lichee Console 4A – RISC-V mini laptop: Review, benchmarks and early issues

#114

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

saxonww wrote: post #87
Havoc wrote: post #81

How difficult is working with risc v currently? I’m guessing back Linux works but most precompiled stuff not?

Not an expert, but I think anything compiled for the ISA implementation you have should work. If there's an issue with RISC-V it's that it's not one ISA with additional instructions accumulating across generations (which I think describes x86), it's a core ISA with a variety of extension blocks that might or might not be present in your implementation. I think this means that any random RISC-V binary stands a greater…

x86 has this problem too. Base x86 doesn't even support floating point. (and x87 which was the og way is now basically deprecated).

Re: Lichee Console 4A – RISC-V mini laptop: Review, benchmarks and early issues

#115

Post by windowsrookie »

ramesh31 wrote: post #104
windowsrookie wrote: post #80

The author mentions if you want a small laptop today, you need to go to eBay and buy an old UMPC. This is not correct, there are some modern mini laptops. I purchased a new 8" mini laptop with folding touchscreen and an intel N100 CPU from AliExpress. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805658668421.html Specs: Intel N100 12GB RAM NVME SSD Slot 1280x800 Touchscreen (with pen support) USB-C port (supports charging and…

>A downside of not buying from a real company: The drivers for the device are emailed to you in a .zip file from the seller. So that is pretty sketchy, but it's the same for any of these Aliexpress devices. Have fun hosting a CCP exit node

Obviously security is a concern when using these cheap Chinese devices. That said, I have not seen any unusual activity on my network.

Re: Lichee Console 4A – RISC-V mini laptop: Review, benchmarks and early issues

#116

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

windowsrookie wrote: post #80

The author mentions if you want a small laptop today, you need to go to eBay and buy an old UMPC. This is not correct, there are some modern mini laptops. I purchased a new 8" mini laptop with folding touchscreen and an intel N100 CPU from AliExpress. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805658668421.html Specs: Intel N100 12GB RAM NVME SSD Slot 1280x800 Touchscreen (with pen support) USB-C port (supports charging and…

There's an entire site dedicated to tiny devices

https://liliputing.com/

Re: Lichee Console 4A – RISC-V mini laptop: Review, benchmarks and early issues

#117

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

calgarymicro wrote: post #109
windowsrookie wrote: post #80

The author mentions if you want a small laptop today, you need to go to eBay and buy an old UMPC. This is not correct, there are some modern mini laptops. I purchased a new 8" mini laptop with folding touchscreen and an intel N100 CPU from AliExpress. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805658668421.html Specs: Intel N100 12GB RAM NVME SSD Slot 1280x800 Touchscreen (with pen support) USB-C port (supports charging and…

There are also all of the various GPD devices[0] as well if you're looking for something a bit more expensive that theoretically has more of a reputation. [0] https://www.gpd.hk/

One was reviewed in 2021... https://liliputing.com/gpd-pocket-3-mini-laptop-review/

Re: Lichee Console 4A – RISC-V mini laptop: Review, benchmarks and early issues

#118

Post by windowsrookie »

cjdell wrote: post #103
windowsrookie wrote: post #80

The author mentions if you want a small laptop today, you need to go to eBay and buy an old UMPC. This is not correct, there are some modern mini laptops. I purchased a new 8" mini laptop with folding touchscreen and an intel N100 CPU from AliExpress. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805658668421.html Specs: Intel N100 12GB RAM NVME SSD Slot 1280x800 Touchscreen (with pen support) USB-C port (supports charging and…

Seriously want. Few questions if I may: - Have tried a Linux distro on it? - What is battery life like (especially under Linux)? - How is the keyboard generally? (Not expecting miracles but is it usable)

I have not personally tried linux on it. This laptop has device specific drivers that may be difficult to get working correctly under linux.

The screen is likely sourced from a tablet, so it's default orientation is portrait. This means that the UEFI displays in that orientation, rather than the correct landscape orientation. The included windows drivers correct that.

There is also a sensor that rotates the screen automatically when you fold it into tablet mode. In device manager it is labeled "Bosch Accelerometer".

Wifi is labeled as a "Realtek 8852BE". But the chip looks pretty generic on the mainboard, I'm not sure if it's a real Realtek chip.

The sound card is generically labeled as "High Definition Audio Device".

The keyboard is actually pretty decent. It's only 7.5" wide, and some of the keys are in a strange position. But has a better feel than a MacBook butterfly keyboard.

Battery life I haven't tested. Right now at 77% Windows is estimating "3 hours remaining". Using it lightly I'd estimate around 4 hours of battery life.

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