BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#161

Post by EamonnMR » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

tubularhells wrote: post #137

qwerty456127 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need SATA when you have SD, also USB3 and Gigabit Ethernet? I have no problem booting from the SD then accessing data on my SATA drives using a USB-attached controller, also plan to get a NAS. Sure, it would be great to have connectors for everything and support for every cool standard but these guys have to give up all what is non-essential to keep it small, cheap and possible to engineer by a small te…

Because he wants to run a file server from it. This too was my first question.

I'm running a file server with a pi and a USB enclosure for a huge sata drive, and it works fine. Could be neater though.

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#162

Post by bsder » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #154

bsder wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have an alternative to the RPi that has an eMMC. It's called a Beaglebone. And everybody bitches that the board is too expensive.

A PI4 compute unit with 8GB of RAM instead of 1GB (faster, DDR4 instead of DDR3 too) and 32GB eMMC and a quad-core 64-bit CPU with much higher IPC while only costing $90 which is around $50 cheaper than a BeagleBoard AI (the same comparison exists for the Black too). You also get direct PCIe access to do what you want. Beagle just doesn't offer anywhere near the same value.

The Black compared with the older RPi3. And everybody was always "The RPi3 is cheaper".

The conversations always went like this:

"Cheaper? So, did you count the SD card you need for the RPi?"

"But it's cheaper."

"And the special power supply because the RPi power systems suck?"

"But it's cheaper."

"And the keyboard and monitor because it doesn't run headless over USB?"

"But it's cheaper."

"... Okay, boss, it's cheaper. Go have fun."

And that's before we even start talking about the lousy documentation of the RPi CPU chips. And the fact that the Ethernet was installed over the USB. etc.

But the RPi was cheaper. Shrug. The guys at TI learned their lesson. Throw everything off the board and make it cheap--the hackers don't give a shit about anything else.

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#163

Post by sradman » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #133

sradman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although the first hardware run will be entirely $140 / 8GiB systems, lower-cost variants with less RAM are expected in following releases. > The initial pilot run of BeagleV will use the Vision DSP hardware as a graphics processor, allowing a full graphical desktop environment under Fedora. Following hardware runs will include an unspecified model of Imagine GPU as well. Sounds like a direct competitor to the Rasp…

>>* SiFive is strategically leveraging or responding to the geopolitics surrounding Chinese technology.* interesting subtext. We should all be debating HW WRT the fact that you can't name a single device (aside from weapons) that does not contain a single-non-chinese-manufactured component... every phone or machine is almost 100% chinese built. "designed by apple in cupertino california" (but made with slave labor fr…

Indeed, the geopolitics works both ways. I think the Chinese are looking at RISC-V as a safe-guard against American embargoes of the kind that killed/maimed HiSilicon, the non-Chinese nation-states are looking for full transparency of silicon design, and the manufacturers want full access to a truly global market that includes China. I'm not sure that SiFive RISC-V designs can be competitive with ARM/x64 in the short-term but the geopolitics creates a potential niche.

I think you are conflating assembly and manufacturing. TSMC is Taiwanese and Samsung is South Korean. Personally I'd prefer that all nation-states and their security organizations followed the Golden Rule and promoted free trade rather than protectionism.

> made with slave labor from congo, china and other countries

I don't equate low-wage manufacturing/assembly with exploitation and certainly not slavery but I understand that this is a common metaphor. Contemporary slavery [1] is a real thing and, until I see contrary evidence, I'm assuming it makes zero contribution to high-tech assembly or manufacturing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Contemporary_slavery

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#164

Post by vhodges » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #79

hajile wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would love to see a Micro-ATX og Mini-ITX board with an ARM or RISC-V CPU, with PCIe ports and storage connectors. There are ARM boards, but they're a little pricy.

https://turingpi.com/v2/ is coming (soon?!?). Uses 1-4 Pi compute modules.

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#165

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #53

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…

Mount a fileserver via NFS?

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#166

Post by pedrocr » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #143

pedrocr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. Just another digital bus. Bummer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C2%B2S

Eh, a decent audio DAC pretty much requires another chip since it takes up a ton of die space, so you'd be an absolute fool to use the same process node as your logic. Since this looks to be beagleboard compatible, you should be able to use an audio cape like this https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-67906/l/beagleb... If you don't care about it being decent, you can just use the PWM channels like the RPi doe…

I don't really want audio. What I'm looking for is to read 3.3V or 5V analog levels, with really low frequency, once a second or less would be fine.

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#167

Post by spurdoman77 » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

Why the linux boards are always designed to be cheap? What about those who have little more dough and are willing to put some cash to get extra? Just create some expensiver premium models, not only cheap stuff, damn it.

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#168

Post by yiyus » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

spurdoman77 wrote: post #167

Why the linux boards are always designed to be cheap? What about those who have little more dough and are willing to put some cash to get extra? Just create some expensiver premium models, not only cheap stuff, damn it.

Because, obviously, everyone wants to be the RISC raspberry. Becoming the expensive-alternative-to-raspberry-nobody-knows-about is not so attractive.

Moreover, it looks to me like these cheap boards are not lacking features. What would you want in a premium version that is not present in the current models?

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#169

Post by Teknoman117 » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

spurdoman77 wrote: post #167

Why the linux boards are always designed to be cheap? What about those who have little more dough and are willing to put some cash to get extra? Just create some expensiver premium models, not only cheap stuff, damn it.

A few suggestions there:

- hardkernel boards

- Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier (8 core + 512 CUDA core volta GPU, PCIe 4.0)

- Honeycomb LX2 (16 core, quad SFP+ (for 10G optics), PCIe 4.0)

I purchased an AGX Xavier for doing some self driving robot projects.

Re: BeagleV – An affordable RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

#170

Post by dkjaudyeqooe » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

my123 wrote: post #64

zozbot234 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is not correct. Anyone can design and build a RISC-V CPU without ever getting permission from anyone.

Anything that uses the ARM ISA on the other hand requires a (costly) licence from ARM.

SiFive has its own proprietary *implementation" buty that's not required, and there are many free open source implementations.