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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

#151

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

> The US doesn't like it, so they may change the rules again. which becomes a bit of a whackamole.

There were rumors like that, but I don't believe it.

The limits nvidia is following are very clear. They cover both total compute power and compute power per square millimeter, in different combinations. nvidia is doing exactly what they were supposed to do. No limits are being pushed, and there is no whack-a-mole on the horizon.

Even if the limits get reduced at some point, it would be because of political winds shifting, not because the current limits aren't doing what they were supposed to do.

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

#152

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

The original name was alumium.

And it sounds like you're saying aluminium got corrupted into aluminum, which is not the case.

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

#153

Post by Dylan16807 »

BarsMonster wrote: post #90
LeonM wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a path to freedom Free how? Just because RISC-V is an open ISA doesn't mean that the silicon is open. None of the manufacturers release the full design of the SoC. Many RISC-V SoCs are still relying on blobs. Most (all?) current available RISC-V SoCs are designed and produced in China. So I wouldn't be so sure about a SoC designed by Alibaba to be free of blobs, license violations, patent infringement or even hardw…

It's just a step. We are not there yet. But we have to continue one step at a time.

"a step" is not always progress in such a complicated landscape with so many dimensions to make progress in.

I like having an open development process for an ISA, but it's one of the least important factors in total computer openness. Many other boards are probably more free despite using a less free ISA.

The patents on basic x86_64 with SSE2 have all expired anyway.

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

#155

Post by 999900000999 »

brucehoult wrote: post #143
999900000999 wrote: post #97

I'd suggest anyone who wants to play with RISC-V to buy a MangoPi instead. The software still isn't really in a working state. But I'd rather pay 30$ to figure that out over 800$.

Of course a laptop with case, screen, battery etc costs more than a bare SBC. The Milk-V Mars, with very similar performance to this (see other comments for JH7110 vs TH1520), starts from $39 with 2 GB RAM (and 4 GB or 8 GB options) and of course quad core 1.5 GHz dual-issue CPU. That's around 8x the compute performance of the 1 GB MangoPi MQ-pro, for $10 more. Or, for more bare-bones, the Mars CM is $34.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll admit I was really disappointed with the MangoPi.

I still think I'm going to wait a few years before buying another device.

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

#157

Post by evanjrowley »

snvzz wrote: post #16

This is TH1520, same SoC as the Lichee Pi 4A. A chip that's oddly faster than JH7110 (VisionFive2, Milk-V Mars) in microbenchmarks, but slower in practice (e.g. gcc). Presumably due to smaller cache. It is also less power efficient, and lacks the upstream support JH7110 enjoys[0]. I would look at Pinetab-V, a tablet-laptop based on that SoC, today. Better yet, wait for Milk-V Oasis[1] tba this June, as well as other…

My question is, will the future Milk-V Oasis laptop have a TrackPoint like the Lichee Console 4A has, or will greater market demand for a more powerful RISC-V laptop lead to nixing TrackPoint for cost optimization?

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

#158

Post by camel-cdr »

kragen wrote: post #78
camel-cdr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'm using the old gnu toolchain branch from brucehoult and write the benchmarks such that they work in rvv 1.0 and rvv 0.7.1. To help with that I've got a gnu assembler macro file that does 1 to 1 instruction translation when possible and for the other cases I need to #if/#else/#endif. I'm working on rvv unicode conversions, and plan to release a blog post/article with benchmarks and explanation soon. The proble…

thanks, this information is fantastic i really hope to have a chance to read your blog post! i haven't tried rvv programming at all

It's up now: https://camel-cdr.github.io/rvv-bench-results/articles/vecto...
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