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Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects

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Re: Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects

#61

Post by dotdi »

magicalhippo wrote: post #50
antonkochubey wrote: post #47

Ubuntu will not support RISC-V CPUs without RVA23 support going further, so this is stuck on 24.04 forever. There is no official Debian image either, and the Ubuntu version uses fixed kernel 6.6.47 with no further updates (it is not even installed from a repo). I own one since a couple months ago but I already regret the purchase.

> this is stuck on 24.04 forever But as a basis for IoT projects that's perfectly fine. They're meant to be install and forget.

only if you find it acceptable to have your IoT projects participate in botnets down the line, I guess.

Re: Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects

#62

Post by Joel_Mckay »

warrenm wrote: post #3
kirito1337 wrote: post #2

I don't like RISC-V unless it has a good GPU

GPUs are [effectively] irrelevant for many use cases (IoT, embedded, most servers, etc)

On Raspberry Pi, the GPU is the only thing that makes a responsive GUI or web-browser feasible, and is the primary reason most people use the HDMI LCD screens for games etc. It also took a large effort to bring up a v4l2 kernel driver for the camera modules etc.

For example, on the CPU one may pin all cores to stream a USB camera or software decode h264. With the SoC GPU decoding or streaming with the v4l2 interface might take up 30% on one core (mainly to handle the network traffic.)

The Raspberry Pi are not the fastest or "best" option (most focus on h264 or MJPEG hardware codecs), but the software/kernel ecosystem provides real value. Also, the foundation doesn't EOL their hardware often, or abandon software support after a single OS release.

A cheap RISC-V SBC is great, but ISA versions are generally so fractured (copied the worst ideas of ARM6)... few OS will likely waste resources targeting a platform that will have 5 variants a year, and proprietary drivers.

A Standard doesn't even need to be good, but must be consistent to succeed. =3

Re: Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects

#64

Post by Joel_Mckay »

LeFantome wrote: post #40
Findecanor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is at least theoretically possible to build a headless "GPU" from RISC-V processors that have the vector extension (RVV). RVV had been designed to be able to run programs compiled for the SIMT execution model that most GPUs use. This Orange Pi RV2 has a small vector unit in each core, and could be used for at least prototyping the software until more powerful chips are available. BTW. There have also been a couple…

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/startup-clai...

The 94% market dominance of CUDA GPUs will roast new competition for sure.

RISC-V has a fragmented ISA standard, and every version is a magical unicorn part (the worst facet of ARM6.)

A Standard doesn't need to be good, but must be consistent to succeed. =3

Re: Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects

#65

Post by Joel_Mckay »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #13
ekianjo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably a series of patent landmines...

Hardware patents are orthogonal to open source software. If a patent covers the hardware then someone who wants to manufacture the hardware needs to license the patent, but you were never going to get free-as-in-beer hardware anyway, and a hardware patent is independent of whether the hardware is fully documented or has firmware with published source code and a license that allows users to make changes to it.

Indeed, most IP used in silicon design are licensed, cost real money, and are under NDA.

I wouldn't say "never", but a clone is highly unlikely for another decade or so. =3

Re: Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects

#66

Post by qludes »

swetland wrote: post #23

Don't suppose there's actually documentation for the CPU anywhere? (I mean more than a tiny "datasheet" with a very high level overview and/or a pile of random Linux/uboot patches)

https://pan.baidu.com/s/1qbLD7j1nw3fRlNq09U8l9g?pwd=511c (from orangepi.cn) links to a Ky X1 chip manual.pdf

Re: Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects

#67

Post by leoedin »

The big ecosystem of SBCs confuses me a bit. Who is buying these?

The work required to build an actual secure, maintainable product on top of an SBC is so big that you'd surely never use one of these. The hard work is all in software. You need a supplier with product lifetime guarantees and a known SoC manufacturer.

If you're a hobbyist, unless you really don't value your time you'd be much better served buying an x86 PC or a Raspberry Pi for whatever project you've got. Any money saved buying one of these would be completely negated by the extra time taken to maintain it.

So who's the target market? Are there products out there built on these? Or are they mostly just shipped straight into desk drawers? How many of these do they actually ship?

Re: Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects

#69

Post by fibers »

leoedin wrote: post #67

The big ecosystem of SBCs confuses me a bit. Who is buying these? The work required to build an actual secure, maintainable product on top of an SBC is so big that you'd surely never use one of these. The hard work is all in software. You need a supplier with product lifetime guarantees and a known SoC manufacturer. If you're a hobbyist, unless you really don't value your time you'd be much better served buying an x8…

Maybe for hobbyists it's more of practicing how to play around with embedded systems? Over a decade ago I sorta got burned by Odroid dropping support for one of their early units despite being much faster than the 2Bs that were selling at the time (plus the annoying cost of emmcs or whatever), so I absolutely agree with your point.

Re: Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects

#70

Post by nine_k »

sylware wrote: post #24

RISC-V going forward, one of the only beacons of hope in the silicon world. I need one of such devices for my self-hosted services. And it will be time to port from C to assembly, really, because we have finally a CPU ISA which is 'sweet spot' balanced, standard, global, pushed forward with significant resources and without IP locks anywhere. No more developer/vendor lock-in via "the only compiler able to generate co…

Noscript? No credit cards? Why these complications?

Run a VM or a container with a full-blown browser, then throw it away.

Get a merchant-locked, ephemeral credit card at privacy.com or equivalent, or buy a preloaded anonymous card.

Problem solved.

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