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PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an open-source alternative to Raspberry Pi board
- ColanR 6y agoPromising 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.
- simcop2387 6y agoIt's still a decent start, and I'm hoping future versions will begin open sourcing the rest of the chip core like the memory controller. It'd be nice to have a good DDR IP core for things like this. EDIT: Removed a bit of the comment from a misunderstanding from reading the article
- chaosharmonic 6y agoIsn't Alibaba also in the process of open-sourcing the XT910 design?
- filterfish 6y agoIt would seem so: https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/27/alibaba_risc_v_chip/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/27/alibaba_risc_v_chip/
- batsigner 6y agoA board competitive with the Raspberry Pi 1B (800 MHz single core) is not "incomparable."
- bscphil 6y agoThe 1B came out in 2012, and you can now get a Pi with 4× Cortex-A72 1.5 GHz and 2 GB of RAM for the same price as the 1B cost then. The title does say "alternative".
- snvzz 6y agorpi1b is still on sale, sure. It would be up to picorio being more open than the pi (easy to do, but not if they fuck up by including a powervr gpu) and/or using less power.
- joshvm 6y agoThe 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).
- ajsnigrutin 6y agoBut zero is well.... a zero.... If you don't want to mess with arduino/esp*, but want a price point and size in that range, with full linux support, to connect a thingy to another thingy (eg sensor to web/mqtt), and don't care about additional power use, you take a rpi0. I don't think it was ever meant as a "normal computer" or a "server" (as we use normal-sized RPis for).
- joshvm 6y agoSure! The Zero is great as a cheap DAQ, I use them all the time. But the SBC that it's being compared to is much more full featured and I don't think you can say it's worse or even comparable.
- drmpeg 6y agoI'm a little concerned that these RV64GC implementations all end up at about 500-600 MHz. There's plenty of 1.5 GHz ARM processors at 28 nm.
- kinghajj 6y agoSonicBOOM, the latest of the Berkley Out-of-Order Machine from UC Berkley, was fabbed for running at 1 GHz.[0] [0]: https://carrv.github.io/2020/papers/CARRV2020_paper_15_Zhao.pdf https://carrv.github.io/2020/papers/CARRV2020_paper_15_Zhao....
- opencl 6y agoThe achievable clock speed is mostly a function of the pipeline depth and how well the design is optimized, the ISA should have very little impact on it. There are a bunch of high-clocked high-performance ARM chips available because several huge companies have already made large R&D investments into developing them.
- brucehoult 6y agoThe SiFive HiFive Unleashed has quad RV64GC plus one RV64IMAC and runs at around 1.5 GHz in TSMC 28nm -- mine's a little unstable at 1.5 after three or four hours at full load, but it's perfect at 1.4. It was pricey at $999 because the chips are from low volume "shuttle run" aka MPW production (probably $300 or $400 each -- would be maybe $10 in volume production) and the board has 8 GB DDR4 2400 and other expensive things such as FMC connector. But it's well faster than a Pi 3 and I've had 2.5 years of use out of it already...
- lopmotr 6y agoIt's roughly in the same class when compared to Arduino/uC RISC-V boards that really are incomparable and suited to a completely different type of application.
- xigency 6y agoThe Arduino Uno retails for around $30 and gives you a 16MHz CPU and 2KB of RAM so I don’t think specs and price are that related, especially when looking at different architectures.
- trishmapow2 6y agoMicrocontroller vs microprocessor. Also I don't know anyone who pays RRP on Arduinos. If I need one for a project I get a Pro Mini (same specs, much smaller) for $2 shipped from China.
- lnsru 6y agoYou don’t use Chinese clone in a commercial product. Especially when whole system costs $15k+
- monocasa 6y agoYou don't use arduinos in commercial products either. You design your own board and drop a atmega328p on it so you don't have to deal with the support calls of the arduino working it's way loose.
- lnsru 6y agoWay too expensive for 5 pieces yearly. Especially for toggling couple pins and LEDs.
- chubs 6y agoOriginal iPhone managed 60fps with an even slower processor (412MHz - https://everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/specs/apple-iphone-specs.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/specs/apple-iphone...). I know it only had 320x480 resolution, but if you consider that the CPU's job is to keep the GPU busy then I see no reason that efficient software could get a smooth UI out of this processor paired to a 60fps-capable GPU. Having said that, 'efficient software' is like hens teeth nowadays :)
- Const-me 6y ago> I see no reason that efficient software could get a smooth UI out of this processor paired to a 60fps-capable GPU Depends on your expectations, technically NES had 60 FPS GPU. If you want to drive a FullHD at that rate, and render GUI comparable to modern phones - you need 3D acceleration, ideally programmable shaders, and the fillrate. GPU is unavailable at launch, they say it will appear in later versions, and it will be a PoverVR. Never said which PowerVR.
- rjsw 6y agoOnly looks like 16-bit RAM too.
- monocasa 6y agoOof, GPU by Imagination Technologies. Here's hoping their close brush with death opened them to the idea of open sourcing their code.
- phkahler 6y ago>> Oof, GPU by Imagination Technologies. My first thought as well. On the other hand... baby steps. We need a chip like this very much. If the first ones are slow or too proprietary that may be OK, it is still pushing the RISC-V ecosystem in the right direction. It will help validate a lot of software which will enable more open designs by having things ready to go.
- ansible 6y agoI've recently purchased a Sipeed Maix Bit, which is based on the Kendryte K210 (RV64GC dual-core), just so that I can start messing around in the RISC-V 64-bit ecosystem. However, the K210 has just 8MB of on-chip RAM, limiting the applications. It ships with MicroPython, and you can run microcontroller Linux, which is a fun little hack. However, I'm primarily interested in Rust development on the RISC-V. For bare-metal programming, the K210 is enough for me to get my feet wet. Thanks to the wonderful community, you can already run gdb for source-level debugging of Rust on that platform, with the addition of a $7 USD JTAG adapter. That said, as long as the PicoRio board (even without a GPU) is available for less than $100 USD, I am totally buying one as soon as they are available for order.
- stefan_ 6y agoThey managed to pick the one mobile GPU vendor that has zero open-source drivers for their chips and a reputation for horribly messy and unstable proprietary code. Another board for the landfill, forever doomed to some 80s throwback Unix timeshare shell application.
- monocasa 6y agoIn IMG's defense, the way that their drivers and firmware are micro optimized for the specific IP core version and use case by the host software was one of their competitive advantages. It's one of the reasons why their cores were some of the fastest and most efficient for the years that they still had plenty of capital rolling in to support that model. You'd expect that kind of thing to be brittle when you don't have source access, but the drivers themselves were remarkably clean when I spent some time reversing them. It's just a shame that they're so afraid of open source too, because the above really compounds that pain.
- bfuclusion 6y agoSweet. I'll monitor this an order a non-gpu version when it comes out. Most of my stuff just needs a serial console.
- ansible 6y agoHilariously, 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.
- vhodges 6y ago'Only' 128MB but https://groupgets.com/manufacturers/good-stuff-department/products/orangecrab https://groupgets.com/manufacturers/good-stuff-department/pr... is capable of running a linux capable core and it's tiny (Adafruit's Feather form factor)
- ansible 6y agoThat's actually not a bad little board. I've been laser focused on RV64, but RV32 is nearly identical. It is a shame the current VexRiscv bitstream for this board doesn't seem to support atomics though.
- qchris 6y agoIt looks like it has some details on "slow" i/o like UART and I2C, but not sure if that counts things like analog PWM timers for certain pins, like there are on RPis. Does anyone have any more information on that? You can do it all in software on a UART, but I think that can be a little more tricky. Since so many basic embedded projects can be helped with that kind of functionality, it would be awesome if it was available.
- makapuf 6y agoOne of the comments I made to myself was that on the die shots, USB3 part is as big as a CPU core ! What would need so much silicon ? Isn't USB3 hardware more or less a serial bus? Is it logic or memory or analog interface parts here? I am curious.
- justaguy88 6y agoIt has to implement all the old versions of USB too
- simcop2387 6y agoThere's a great deal of communication that happens outside the operating system, and a bunch of different multiplexing modes and things like that. There's at least 4 different speeds it's going to need to talk at (1.5mbps, 12mbps, 480mbps, and 5gbps) with a good deal of synchronization and other bits. There's a rather decent amount of logic that has to be implemented, and I wouldn't be shocked if you end up needing what basically amounts to another CPU for the controller itself to manage the entire connection and negotiation. Depending on the physical construction it might also need some decent power transistors if it's also handling the 2 amp current limit on usb3.0 internally (rather than signalling ones outside the chip).
- drmpeg 6y agoThe popular Cypress/Infineon FX3 USB3 controller has a 200 MHz ARM926EJ core on chip. https://www.cypress.com/file/140296/download https://www.cypress.com/file/140296/download
- monocasa 6y agoNvidia at one point used one of their home grown Falcon cores (which looks like it could be around the same gate approximate gate count) to baby sit the USB3 phy as well. They're probably going to switch to RISC-V for that if they haven't already.
- CameronNemo 6y agoDoesn't the SoC include the actual USB-A connector?
- OJFord 6y agoI honestly didn't realise the Raspberry Pi isn't open source. Why isn't it? The Foundation's charitable objective is education, so sure, it's not necessary, but there really seems to be no reason for it to be closed - I suppose it's just 'closed by default'?
- PedroBatista 6y agoThe Foundation doesn't make the SoCs, Broadcom does.
- neilpanchal 6y agoAlso, its not possible to write your own DSI/MIPI drivers for a phone LCD that you can buy on eBay, partly for not having the DSI/MIPI specification unless you pay upwards of thousands of dollars a year and Raspberry Pi doesn't allow access to the DSI/MIPI HAL layer - its part of the SOC which Broadcom controls. About the only way to make a device with an LCD is to use the built-in HDMI.
- stefan_ 6y agoNothing they can do about the specification. There is a DSI driver in the proprietary firmware, but there is also an open-source upstream version: https://github.com/anholt/linux/wiki/Raspberry-Pi-and-other-MIPI-DSI-display-panels https://github.com/anholt/linux/wiki/Raspberry-Pi-and-other-... This is a theme with the RPi. They generally implement new hardware in their proprietary firmware first, for lack of skills/time to do a proper upstream job of it (or the convience of copy-pasting some vendor code), then pay someone to develop an open-source driver. For example, here is a massive 80 patch series nearing merge for the new display pipeline in the RPi 4: https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/series/73839/ https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/series/73839/
- userbinator 6y agopartly for not having the DSI/MIPI specification unless you pay upwards of thousands of dollars a year There is a little thing called Google... ;-)
- ComputerGuru 6y agoReally, it’s the price and mass market availability more than anything else that makes the Raspberry Pi a Raspberry Pi, moreso than the exact featureset (especially considering the difference in capabilities between the original and v4). No word on that, it seems?
- nl 6y agoSee also https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maix-Cube-p-4553.html https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maix-Cube-p-4553.html This is RISC-V, with a neural co-processor (runs YOLO), camera, GPIOs, leds etc. For $25. It runs MicroPython out of the box, but someone has Linux booting on the board equivalent. I have one, and there are teething pains but the platform seems pretty capable.
- brucehoult 6y agoYou can technically get a cut-down Linux kernel and a couple of small programs on it, but with only 8 MB RAM it's awfully limited. You need 256 MB or 512 MB absolute minimum for any kind of reasonable modern desktop distro, and better 2+ GB.
- nl 6y agoWhy would you want to run a desktop distro on a device like this? That's not what you get this for.
- nsajko 6y agoWhy 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.
- jdc 6y agohttps://riscv.org/risc-v-genealogy/ https://riscv.org/risc-v-genealogy/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#History
- hajile 6y agoThe code density beats ARMv8 (the best they could do with a fresh start do-over) and beats x86 too. They gave serious consideration to creating a compact instruction set that also doesn't cause the performance impacts seen in Thumb. There's various reasons for a new ISA. The most appealing right now is the patent pool. Most other open ISAs are explicitly patent encumbered (recent MIPS versions) or provide zero protection (openrisc). The chances of getting sued over RISCV seem very small until you start moving to non-ISA parts of the chip. For an ISA to succeed, the ISA itself is a distant second to the ecosystem as x86 shows so well. The amount of money an R&D being poured into RISCV would single-handedly be enough reason to adopt.
- messe 6y ago> the code density that RISC-V allows is disappointing considering the designers had an opportunity to start from scratch. IIRC the code density beats ARMv8 and x86_64 in most situations.
- userbinator 6y agoThey may have beaten the average compiler in x86 code density, but compilers aren't normally optimising for size and, as someone who has been writing x86 Asm for a long time, I can safely say that compiler output in general, even at max size opts, is far from the theoretical limit for x86 --- there is plenty of room for improvement there. On the other hand, RISCs are far more constrained in size optimisation. For an example of what I mean by x86 having a very high limit on code density, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15720923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15720923
- byset 6y agoInteresting 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.
- melling 6y agoHaving 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.
- microcolonel 6y agoYep, the sanctions have also turned a lot of Chinese R&D money into open source development funds, I love it.
- rjsw 6y agoI thought that the CPU in the original Raspberry Pi was designed for set top boxes not mobile phones.
- derekp7 6y agoI also recall that it was actually primarily a GPU chip which had an ARM core originally intended as a driver for the GPU (and not really intended as a primary processor). And they were leftovers from larger volume chip runs.
- mrlambchop 6y agoThe BCM2835 was originally a high volume shipping cell phone GPU for Nokia with a different part number (BCM2708) and the ARM core enabled internally. It was also stacked with DDR memory. It shipped first in a STB for Roku, but that was happenstance vs any design intention. The market for separate cell phone GPUs died off, but the die was manufactured still for the RPi.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoUnfortunately 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 https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- monocasa 6y agoThat's talking about the HDL, not the software.
- arexxbifs 6y agoOne 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.
- kelnos 6y agoIn some ways I see this as a downside. Despite how many years the RPi has been a thing, the drivers for it still aren't fully upstreamed to the Linux kernel, and the device tree in mainline is very different from that in the RPi Foundation's kernel fork. The RPi-specific userspace bits are just (in the past year or so) starting to become more standard (like moving the stuff in /opt/vc to standard system locations, having a normal kernel headers package). I don't want a specially-built OS just for one piece of hardware. I want to run stock Debian, with a stock kernel. And yes, I can do that, but as you hit at, the experience is sometimes lacking (for a while I couldn't get sound to work with stock Debian). I've been looking at some of the RPi workalike boards that run Armbian... I haven't dug into it yet to evaluate the quality of Armbian, but I at least like the overall approach of having one OS that can support different chipsets and boards.
- lsllc 6y agoIf 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.
- rkagerer 6y agoDidn't Next Thing Co, the makers of CHIP, go bankrupt? (I recall a Voder backer order I had with them that never materialized)
- lsllc 6y agoThey did but the founder started up again with the same design. Only the price is much higher (can't blame them, the CHIP-Pro was a steal which I think is why they went under). EDIT: The reboot was called Source Parts but it looks like they may have gone under also. Too bad, the CHIP-Pro was pretty nice.
- snvzz 6y agoApparently 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.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoI'd also be fine with something with a very simple framebuffer. They should consider throwing HDMI or display port or on their V1. Or hell, why not the "Display Parallel Interface" DPI thing that's on the RPI. I suspect they'd find the market for that would be fairly significant. At these clock rates and with multiple cores plenty can be done without acceleration.
- monocasa 6y agoFWIW, every chip I've seen with a PowerVR GPU uses a video scan out engine that's pretty much completely disconnected from the GPU. That's one of the neat things about how programmable their cores are; you can resolve in the tile to just about any surface format since it's all done in software anyway, so it's really easy to integrate with other scan IP blocks. TL;DR: You'll probably get a simple un-accelerated framebuffer (maybe with a few planes) with a PowerVR off to the side that you can just ignore if you want.
- snvzz 6y ago>with a PowerVR off to the side that you can just ignore if you want. The problem is that I can't, and most people who care about freedom and thus could be interested in a slower, more expensive board... can't either.
- monocasa 6y agoOf course you can, just ignore it, and pretend it isn't there. Don't even load its drivers. Because of dark silicon, you won't be able to fully light up the chip anyway. Use the GPU being off to clock other parts faster if you want. You still get an unaccelerated framebuffer if it has the same arch as every other chip I've seen with a PowerVR for the past twenty years (Dreamcast, BeagleBoard, iPhones, PSP Vita, the MIPS board they came out with that I'm forgetting the name of).
- ArchD 6y ago"even though the goal is to eventually have as much IP released under a BSD-like open source license" What do people mean _exactly_ by 'IP' in contexts like this related to computing boards such as SBCs and FPGAs? The only 'IP' I know is a term pertaining to legal concepts like patents, where 'IP' and 'patent' are almost synonymous. In the current context, what does it mean to 'release' this 'IP'? How do you 'release' a patent?
- dboreham 6y agoYou disclaim your right to bring suits against infringers?
- bruckie 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_intellectual_property_core https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_intellectual_p... It's a logic or semiconductor layout design for a component (e.g. a processor core, or a peripheral like a UART, DMA controller, etc.). "IP" for hardware is roughly analogous to "source code" for software.
- monocasa 6y agoIt sort of colloquially gets used as "subsystem" or "library" as well. Tends to refer to a piece that can be treated more or less as a black box and imported with well defined semantics.
- jlokier 6y agoAlthough it does come from Intellectual Property, they use "IP" the same way game developers and web developers use "asset" for an image, 3d model or sound effect. Sometimes they even say the plural as "IPs". In semiconductors an IP is often some logic block, often supplied by a third-party to paste into your design, or part of your own company's library. For example on SoCs a cache, a USB PHY, a CPU core, an AES unit, an Ethernet controller, a PCI controller, a video decoder, an audio decoder, etc. A design unit you could imagine selling to be used inside other company's designs. That's why you can "release an IP". I find the use of "IP" for these things a bit distasteful, so I try not to use the term myself, but it's very common in the field.
- jhallenworld 6y agoWill the chips be available on their own? This is the biggest problem with Raspberry-PI- I can't buy the CPU on Digikey.
- ecesena 6y agoWhat's the latest on a cheap, small board where you can run linux, with BLE & WiFi 2.4/5GHz? Rpi Zero W and the corresponding Banana Pi M2 Zero meet all criteria except the 5GHz. Beside these, I have a really hard time finding any cheap alternative. There's plenty of embedded devices for iot, from arduino to all others. But 100% of the iot I have in my apartment are actually powered and don't need a batter/extremely low consumption. I much rather enjoy the flexibility of running linux (or android) vs flashing a firmware.
- CameronNemo 6y agoIs there an issue with using an external WiFi adapter?
- ecesena 6y agoNot an issue per se, it’s just that the cost goes up pretty quickly... imagine you want to build your own fleet of 10-20 devices.
- tjoff 6y agoWhy do you want 5GHz? Seems 2.4GHz would be a better fit for the usecase.
- ecesena 6y agoYou can share your wifi config from the phone to the device, but my phone is connected to 5GHz and not 2.4, so that doesn't work. I then have to connect my phone to the 2.4 and then forget the network. It's just an unnecessary step.
- voltagex_ 6y ago"The first board without GPU is planned for Q4 2020, following with one with PowerVR GPU in 2021.". Ah, how quickly we forgot the GMA500/Poulsobo chip.
- frabbit 6y agoI didn't. It was the first thing that leapt to my mind as soon as I saw Imagination Technologies mentioned: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/12/poulsbo-mess-casts-a-shadow-on-intels-moblin-project/?comments=1&post=119130 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/12/pouls... What sort of person describes a board with a closed-source GPU firmware as "Open Source"?
- rcarmo 6y agoI like the idea of going multi-core from the start. The Pi Zero W is massively under-powered when compared to its siblings, but IMHO suffers a lot more from being single-core than from any other constraint. (Which is why I use the 3A+ for most of my stuff, really. Four cores and full-size HDMI and USB are very useful indeed.)
- jmnicolas 6y ago> Storage – TBD, likely MicroSD card Meh. I wish they would realize that SD cards are not made to be a system disk. I need SATA or NVME ports and lots of them so I can build my own NAS!
- somedude11 6y agoSo much this. Don't make this another unreliable toy wasting space in somebodys drawer.
- neilv 6y agoYeah, I don't have a lot of confidence in using MicroSD or USB flash for the software and OS in anything other than a hobby toy. I'd prefer that storage to be SSD or eMMC. Separate from what the software&OS drive is, for a small NAS, 2 SATA ports for data storage (RAID mirrored) would be nice, but doesn't have to be in the general-purpose hobby $35 (or whatever) size board. For larger NAS needing more SATA ports, I definitely wouldn't expect or want that in the $35 board, but seems like there's probably a market for a board like that.
- kimsant 6y agoThe chip industry will do like the telecom industry. 1st few players grow it important 2nd it becames a big monopoly, we all depend on 3rd other players need 10 years to build competition ( needed time to build cable/towers) ( needed time to develop processors ) 4th you have a bunch of players, all with FIX COSTS and with a 1$ variable cost for new customers, the competition squeez the margins to arround Zero. 5th you still have to keep up with the improvements ( 5G?? / 7nm??, 6nm?? ), so just to keep going investments are needed, and so profits disappear in the industry airlines, Telecom, .... next chipmakers
- minetest2048 6y agoI understand why the memory and USB controller is closed source, but why do the slow IOs such as I2C and SPI is also closed source?
- Havoc 6y ago>The board will target the Raspberry Pi price That would be amazing. RISC V has thus far not struck me as something within reach of the average casual consumer.