Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

beaglev.seeed.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 311 posts

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

#51

Post by brucehoult »

tyingq wrote: post #38
filleokus wrote: post #11

What kind of performance is expected from this compared to say the RPi 4B? Any noteworthy changes in performance characteristics (e.g better/worse I/O or something)?

The Rpi4B has a Quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5 GHz with 1MB L2 cache. The A72 claims 4.7 DMIPS/MHz. This board has a Dual-core U74 (RV64GC) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5 GHz with 2MB L2 cache. The U74 claims 2.5 DMIPS/MHz. So, roughly 1/4 as fast as a RPIi 4B given the roughly half DMIPS/MHz and half the cores? That, of course, is a really rough guess, ignoring lots of potential variables.

The CPU cores are comparable to the ARM A55, rather than the A72.

It's more MHz and a better uarch than the cores in a Pi 3, so should outperform even the newer Pi 3+ on tasks that don't use NEON and don't use more than 2 cores.

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

#52

Post by ansible »

alkonaut wrote: post #40

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?

> 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 architecture.

> Is it likely to evolve faster because it is open or more modern?

They have a good extension mechanism that allows relatively clean additions to the instruction set. Some of the recent ones like the vector extension aren't finalized yet. Anyone can propose their own extension. Historically, ARM might work with their most important customers to implement an extension, but good luck getting their attention if you're not already paying them millions per year.

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

#53

Post by mrweasel »

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 slot).

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

#54

Post by trollied »

stragies wrote: post #25
zwirbl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Guidelines: Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful. Still, the page loads in ~3secs on my 2012 i7-3770K with 100Mbps...

The page is horrific though. 2 meters of scrolling for 7 sentences and 3 pics.

Welcome to the modern web :(

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

#55

Post by loudmax »

fctorial wrote: post #41

How is RISC-V better than x64? Aren't both of them just ISAs? The only pro I can find is that RISC V is cleaner (less legacy). But no one programs in assembly these days so why is this an issue?

Not many people program in assembly, but teams working on compilers like gcc and LLVM very much do care about the ISA.

Apple has been able to make great progress moving from Intel x86 to their own custom ARM M1 processor. The way I understand it, RISC-V may allow similar advances.

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

#56

Post by IshKebab »

alkonaut wrote: post #40

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?

Compared to ARM, nothing significant. They're very similar load-store architectures.

Here's a RISC-V quick reference: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1617/ECAD+Arch/files/docs/...

And ARM: http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/Volume1/QuickReferenceC...

The main difference is that RISC-V is a lot more modular, so it's going to be difficult to distribute binaries for but more flexible if you're doing something completely vertical. Also a lot of the modules have bundle relatively common/easy instructions with niche/difficult ones. E.g. multiply with divide.

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

#57

Post by jgjot-singh »

brucehoult wrote: post #51
tyingq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Rpi4B has a Quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5 GHz with 1MB L2 cache. The A72 claims 4.7 DMIPS/MHz. This board has a Dual-core U74 (RV64GC) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5 GHz with 2MB L2 cache. The U74 claims 2.5 DMIPS/MHz. So, roughly 1/4 as fast as a RPIi 4B given the roughly half DMIPS/MHz and half the cores? That, of course, is a really rough guess, ignoring lots of potential variables.

The CPU cores are comparable to the ARM A55, rather than the A72. It's more MHz and a better uarch than the cores in a Pi 3, so should outperform even the newer Pi 3+ on tasks that don't use NEON and don't use more than 2 cores.

Would this have any sort of meaningful impact on sound/music related processing? E.g I am thinking of vst applications running inside DAWs

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

#59

Post by happimess »

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…

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.

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

#60

Post by pabs3 »

stragies wrote: post #31
Narishma wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to [0] the first revision will just have a framebuffer, later ones an unspecified Imagination GPU. 0 - https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/01/13/beaglev-powerful-ope...

That means PowerVR, most likely. Bad news, no useable drivers ever existed for mainline linux kernel for any PowerVR CPU

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...

Post reply on HN