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PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

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Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#31

Post by vlmutolo »

nsajko wrote: post #17

Why is RISC-V even so hyped up/successful? Other open ISAs precede it, and AFAIK the code density that RISC-V allows is disappointing considering the designers had an opportunity to start from scratch.

One concrete advantage RISCV has is its variable-length SIMD instruction set. The assembly instructions used for SIMD in RISCV can all operate on data sizes that are various powers of 2. All using the same instructions. You could even call it “SIMD with dynamically-sized data”.

Right now, x86 needs one set of instructions for each SIMD data size. That’s why we have SSE, AVX, AVX512, etc. This introduces complexity for both hardware designers and software designers. You have to actively update software to work with newer chips with larger SIMD registers. In the proposed RISCV design, you wouldn’t have to. It would just work on all sizes.

Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#32

Post by byset »

Interesting that the group behind this is Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, which is sponsored by UC Berkeley as well as a major Chinese university and the Shenzhen government.

China is quite interested in RISC-V gaining traction as trade and security barriers rise and they work to build up their domestic technology sector.

Going into wild-ass speculation mode, if this board really is affordable, I wonder if it's being subsidized by the Chinese gov't to encourage RISC-V adoption.

If I understand correctly, it's hard to make a cheap RISC-V Linux board with a price in the same order of magnitude as Raspberry Pi, because the Pi benefits from the availability of cheap, powerful ARM-based CPUs that were mass-produced for the mobile phone market. Linux-capable RISC-V parts have nowhere near these economies of scale.

Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#33

Post by ansible »

bfuclusion wrote: post #4

Sweet. I'll monitor this an order a non-gpu version when it comes out. Most of my stuff just needs a serial console.

Hilariously, on one of the slides posted to Twitter, the phase 1 chip won't have low-speed peripherals. But I'm sure they'll include at least one serial port. No one is going to get very far without even a serial console.

The phase 1 SoC is all I'm interested in for now. The lowest-size LPDDR4 part I could find is 256MB, which isn't a lot, but enough for what I want to do. Having that RAM, and networking or USB, will be enough for me to buy one. Assuming a reasonable price, of course.

Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#34

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Unfortunately not purely based on Free and Open Source software:

> Exceptons (sic): foundry related IPs and high-speed commercial interface, but gradually reduce close source (sic) usage over time

Wonder what the FSF will make of it. They've long lamented that Raspberry Pi depends on non-Free software.

https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers

Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#35

Post by joshvm »

ColanR wrote: post #2

Promising hardware, though this isn't looking like comparable hardware even to the Raspberry Pi Zero. Only has a quad-core 64-bit RISC-V (RV64GC) processor at 500+ MHz. RAM size not specified. If it was priced in the $5-15 range it would be more or less practical, but higher than that I'd be buying it solely for the architecture novelty.

The Pi Zero is single core at 1GHz so it's not a totally fair comparison. There are plenty of times I wish I had more cores, even if they were half the speed. Compiling anything on the zero is incredibly slow. It also has slower DDR2 RAM and no USB3 (which makes a big difference for many peripherals).

Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#36

Post by arexxbifs »

One of the key selling points for me is the RasPi OS and software ecosystem. Raspbian a great distro, very well aligned with the hardware. Getting a generic distro to boot on a system isn't the same as ensuring a smooth experience with things like system config, video playback, networking and peripherals.

Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#37

Post by lsllc »

If this is real ... sign me up! I have a couple of RISC-V Arduino clones, interesting but not that useful. I've ported software to RISC-V using the Fedora RISC-V port running under QEMU. It'll be nice to finally get inexpensive Linux capable hardware in hand!

Of course, what would be really good would be a CHIP-Pro style module that is a complete Linux SBC suitable for inclusion in a IoT PCB design. Thus far, the CHIP-Pro (ARM-32) and Onion Omega2 (MIPS-32) have been the only viable reasonably priced embeddable Linux modules I've seen.

Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#38

Post by melling »

byset wrote: post #32

Interesting that the group behind this is Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, which is sponsored by UC Berkeley as well as a major Chinese university and the Shenzhen government. China is quite interested in RISC-V gaining traction as trade and security barriers rise and they work to build up their domestic technology sector. Going into wild-ass speculation mode, if this board really is affordable, I wonder if it's…

Having competition to x86 and ARM would be great.

China could create the economies of scale needed to drive prices down. I saw something where NVIDIA was using RISC-V in part of its GPU’s.

Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#39

Post by microcolonel »

byset wrote: post #32

Interesting that the group behind this is Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, which is sponsored by UC Berkeley as well as a major Chinese university and the Shenzhen government. China is quite interested in RISC-V gaining traction as trade and security barriers rise and they work to build up their domestic technology sector. Going into wild-ass speculation mode, if this board really is affordable, I wonder if it's…

Yep, the sanctions have also turned a lot of Chinese R&D money into open source development funds, I love it.

Re: PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board

#40

Post by snvzz »

Apparently they plan to include a PowerVR GPU on the second generation boards.

That's not very OSHW if you ask me. I'd rather an unaccelerated framebuffer, or even no graphics at all.

They don't seem to understand what kind of market there is for this sort of device. If I didn't care about this sort of thing, I would just grab one of the many proprietary-encumbered SBCs, any of which faster and cheaper than this board is going to be.

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