121–130 of 311 posts
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Also, ImgTec are planning on writing and upstreaming open drivers for Linux and mesa for another RISC-V based board, so probably those drivers will work here too. https://riscv.org/blog/2020/11/picorio-the-raspberry-pi-like...
Anybody know what changed their mind? As I recall, they've always been pretty hostile to open source.
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> Is there anything about RISC-V that is "better" simply because it is a later design than others? A lot of it is because it is newer, and the designers have learned from previous architectures. It is a relatively clean and straightforward instruction set, designed to be easily and efficiently implemented. There's not anything that is super crazy revolutionary, in contrast to the (still vaporware) Mill CPU architectu…
The mill has been in development for... 18 ~years now! Soon they will be able to hire engineers who are actually younger than the company. I wonder if there has ever been a tech company that survived so long without bringing a product to market. Duke Nukem Forever took ~14 years.
Most RISC-V processors use really old node sizes. Even Raspberry Pi is on 28nm. To be more efficient and complete with mainstream processors a move to 10/12nm is required.
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Looks like their Hard IP is proprietary but based on open high-level designs such as Rocket and BOOM. The peripherals situation is mixed, but they've stated in the past that they're quite OK with using open designs whenever feasible.
The high-level design is proprietary too. As I said elsewhere, SiFive CPUs are just as closed as Arm ones, you just pay a royalty to SiFive instead of Arm.
This video from SiFive clearly explains the RISC-V ecosystem and how SiFive is involved.
Can someone explain the technical benefits of this architecture over the competition? That is should I be excited if I don't care about e.g. openness? Or is it simply an effort to create something that is a half-decent cpu alternative but open? Is there anything about RISC-V that is "better" simply because it is a later design than others? Is it likely to evolve faster because it is open or more modern?
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEeZWGE3PwbZTypHq00G-...
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I suspect they don't necessarily mean spinning platters. A SATA port also allows the connection of an SSD which is almost always a huge boost in usability over SD slots. The fact that you can add a large platter for a small NAS solution is just a nice option. I'd far rather see a 2x PCIe port that could be used for whatever you wanted.
I think it's just that most people want to use the Raspberry Pi for toy projects. They're trying to keep the cost down, and to keep the board small. If you want something like micro ATX ARM motherboard, that's a different use case. The large majority of Raspberry Pi users are fine with USB 3.0 ports for I/O.
Raspberry pis are very popular as audio streamers, media centers that streams of the network, home automations etc.
But all or them greatly suffer from the fact that it can randomly die on you. Which is quite frustrating.
The only sensible solution (imho) to this currently is netbooting but it can be a hassle to setup in some cases.
An integrated 16GB emmc would do wonders for everything mentioned above.
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How about _reliable_ storage needs?
SD in itself isn't technically unreliable. Lots of smartphones do just fine with eMMC, which is same thing as microSD card except in nonstandard IC chip form thus can't carry SD branding.
You want "industrial" cards from a vendor tailored to the space. I wouldn't trust even those new industrial sandisk cards.
> All GPIOs can be configured to different functions including but not limited to SDIO, Audio, SPI, I2C, UART and PWM Does supporting audio mean that these GPIOs can be used as analog-to-digital converters? There are home automation applications where reading a voltage in an ethernet connected device is a good fit but from what I've seen in a raspberry that requires extra hardware connected to the IO ports.
Is there something inherently complicated in adding a SATA/M.2 port to board like this? The RaspberryPi is also "disk-less", which to me is one of the major limitations. It's a super interesting little board, and I love that it's a RISC-V, that could really help getting the CPU in the hands of people. I just don't know enough about these things to understand why there are no storage connectors (other than an SD card…
You can get an SD card with 0.5TB capacity on it for USD$30, what storage needs do you foresee? Also these tend to be used where weight is an issue, so, why do you want to lug around a huge disk?
Is there something inherently complicated in adding a SATA/M.2 port to board like this? The RaspberryPi is also "disk-less", which to me is one of the major limitations. It's a super interesting little board, and I love that it's a RISC-V, that could really help getting the CPU in the hands of people. I just don't know enough about these things to understand why there are no storage connectors (other than an SD card…
I'm certainly no expert, but I've never been able to run a spinning disk HDD off of a raspberry pi without a powered USB hub. I imagine the thermals and form factor would be hurt pretty badly by including a plausible power supply.