I’ve been thinking about acquiring one of these for a while, because RISC-V sounds quite interesting, but I think I should ask about it here before I spend money on this stuff and the shipping…
First of all, how well does it run Linux? It appears that MangoPi uses their own distro, so I could imagine that a standard one wouldn’t run… I don’t know about the Sipeed chips. Did anyone here try?
Secondly, which specific model do you have? It’s a little hard to get an overview of what’s currently available (MangoPi and Sipeed are the only two that I know), I would appreciate a list or just the name of the one you have.
And, in general, what’s it like? Does the shipping take long? What are you using it for?
The current RISC-V chips capable of running Linux that I’ve seen are not yet very usable due to slow speeds. They will eventually speed up to a good extent, but for the mean time they are best used in embedded applications.
It’s not out yet, but Pine64 is making the Star64 with a RISC-V CPU from SiFive. You can find it in this blog post: https://www.pine64.org/2022/08/28/august-update-risc-and-reward/#1375b31
SiFive is a Californian company, but thanks for the link anyway, it looks promising.
Yeah, but Pine64 who is making the SBC is a Chinese company. I don’t know of any current projects using Chinese RISC-V chips. Hopefully that changes soon.
I hope Orange Pi jumps in the game because I enjoy buying their products.
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The only Linux SoC I’m seeing is the Allwinner D1. And the only affordable boards I see are the MangoPi and Sipeed kit that are mentioned. (both under $30)
As I said I’m only aware of the D1. There is a kit for the ‘Alibaba T-Head ICE’ that came out last year but is still expensive. I cannot tell you much about Linux and all that personally until my Sipeed arrives. I bought the kit with the dock and SoM from the aliexpress seller ‘FYD Open Source Hardware’ because they have a slightly better shipping arrangement and decent reviews.If money is a serious concern to you then you can wait until until the market inevitably adjusts to more and better options. I had been eyeing it for about a year and only happened to pull the trigger when I was showing them to my grandma and she offered to pay for it lol.
You can buy the MangoPi if you care about the Pi Zero form factor. Otherwise I doubt they are really different aside from Sipeed being specifically advertised as a ‘dev kit’ where you could swap SoM’s and docks. I bought the 512MB SoM and I’m sure memory won’t be the limiting factor.
Not Chinese or American there is Shakti. Also the European Processor Initiative that has produced some silicon.
There are a few options if you want some good and cheap MCUs also. The ESP32-C3 is nice looking and it has 400KB of SRAM which you can get online for around $1.5. There is the GD32VF103 line that some people have managed to get their hands on. https://www.reddit.com/r/RISCV/comments/jkm4xt/gd32vf103_chips_available_from_a_supplier_in_the/. I would love to have some of those fresh for PCBs.
LCSC carries the WCH CH32V103’s seemingly in favor of the GigaDevice stuff. But they seem worse and incompatible. Also seem to make some products with their CH5xx cores that might be worth having.
Yeah Nuclei puts out some cores. And there is a chip implementation of XuanTie E906 named CH2601
Dev kit debuts RISC-V XuanTie C910 SoC with a 3D GPU and Android and Linux support
That’s all I have for now.
Oh but there is all this stuff.
https://linuxgizmos.com/this-under-6-sbc-runs-linux-on-risc-v-based-c-sky-chip/
https://linuxgizmos.com/1ghz-risc-v-sbc-launches-at-39/
The up to 1GHz, single-core processor provides 2.4 DMIPS/MHz(O2) and 3.8 CoreMark/MHz(O3) performance. This compares to 7.1/MHz CoreMark for the XuanTie 910
https://linuxgizmos.com/risc-v-based-allwinner-chip-to-debut-on-13-linux-hacker-board/
https://linuxgizmos.com/risc-v-gains-new-performance-leader-with-alibabas-16-core-xt-910/
“September, 12nm FinFET due” https://www.anandtech.com/show/15991/hot-chips-2020-live-blog-alibaba-xuantie910-riscv-cpu-300pm-pt
Continued…