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Allwinner D1s/F133 RISC-V Processor Integrates 64MB DDR2
- ndesaulniers 5y agoThat's not much DRAM, but consider that the Funkey S (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/squonk/funkey-s-the-worlds-smallest-foldable-handheld-console https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/squonk/funkey-s-the-wor...) uses the Allwinner V3s (32b ARMv7-a) with 64MB DDR2 DRAM.
- JustSomeNobody 5y agoLooks like it's stuck at July 2020.
- ndesaulniers 5y agoThe kickstarter may have ended, but they've entered general production and can be purchased today here: https://funkey-project.myshopify.com/products/funkey-s https://funkey-project.myshopify.com/products/funkey-s.
- brucehoult 5y agoIf you want more DRAM there's the "<$20" Sipeed board with a 512 MB version of the same SoC, the "Lichee RV" module, available within the next month. https://www.hackster.io/news/sipeed-teases-linux-capable-64-bit-risc-v-system-on-module-for-under-20-b75ebe776d87 https://www.hackster.io/news/sipeed-teases-linux-capable-64-... Or of course the Nezha with 1 GB RAM and a full set of interfaces for ~$100. I expect there will be plenty more boards with this basic SoC in future.
- Shadonototra 5y ago6x more expensive ;)
- wmf 5y agoThis chip looks similar to the F1C100s that was used in the $3 Linux business card: https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/my-business-card-runs-linux/ https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/my-business-c... By switching to RISC-V I guess Allwinner can save a few cents of Arm license fees.
- fartcannon 5y agoMight be that they care about open computers.
- naraic0o 5y agoAllwinner? Maybe, but I highly doubt it. They're one of the worst offenders when it comes to releasing sources.[0] [0] https://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations https://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations
- simosx 5y agoAllwinner wants to sell as many SoCs as possible. Being open and having good Linux support is good business. The serve the low-end sector, which means they may not spend a lot of money for Linux support. But Linux support is good for business. About a decade ago, Allwinner was providing an "SDK" to vendors to customize the Linux kernel for their devices. This "SDK" was a tarball of the compiled Linux kernel. In it, there were object files for drivers by third-parties for devices in the SoC that Allwinner sourced from other companies. Allwinner had the source code but obviously could not release it. They did not think better, and included those object files because it helps device integrators (mainly Android) to get the job done. How do you deal with this issue with this blatant GPL violation? Obviously, you do not alienate the company. They fcked up but it's not the end of the world. They cannot release the source code of parts they do not own. You build a relationship and get them through to the right path. But what happened in reality? A colossal fck-up. An attempt to "blackmail" the company to release the full source code and enforce the GPL. Listen to this, an attempt to enforce the GPL to a company "located in China". Not even on vendors that sell products in Europe or the US. This alienated any attempts to get Allwinner's upper management to work with Linux. Allwinner made an effort and released some stuff (https://github.com/allwinner-zh https://github.com/allwinner-zh) including the bootloader source and documentation (2015). The damage was done. In 2016, Linus and other kernel developers posted their position on enforcing the GPL (https://lwn.net/Articles/698452/ https://lwn.net/Articles/698452/). Very pragmatic and should have been followed with Allwinner.
- monocasa 5y agoThe HDMI and DSP lines are crossed out. Does anyone know of they aren't supported on this chip vs the regular D1?
- MisterTea 5y agoLikely a mistake in the spec list copied from the earlier intro article published in March. The chip has no DSP, HDMI or DVI blocks listed so it makes sense.
- Jhsto 5y agoThe second paragraph says: > Besides the built-in RAM, Allwinner D1s comes with many of the same features as D1 RISC-V SoC, but loses HDMI output and the HiFi 4 audio DSP, and Allwinner made some tweaks to the IOs with one less I2S audio interface, and general-purpose ADC.
- simfree 5y agoWere the HDMI output and audio DSP licensed IP blocks from another company? On other Allwinner chips, the HDMI phy is from a different company than Allwinner. Guess this is a super budget respin of this chip, where most licensed IP blocks have been removed.
- monocasa 5y agoOr even just that the chip was designed to fuse these blocks off for the low price options. It's not uncommon for those license agreements to allow disabled blocks without the licensing fees.
- brucehoult 5y agoIt saves millions of dollars to not have to do a different mask set, so quite likely. The downside is wasted silicon area and thus per-unit cost, but you've got to make a lot before that bites.
- phlipski 5y ago
- gautamcgoel 5y agoCan someone explain why this uses DDR2 instead of a more modern DDR4?
- phlipski 5y agoI'm gonna speculate that no one sells DDR4 in bare die form. There are however vendors that sell DDR2 bare die for SIP's.
- KZerda 5y agoOffhand, one of the big issues that comes to mind is latency. DDR4 has a much higher latency than DDR2 between requesting and receiving, so could be potentially slower in a simpler core that doesn't have as big of a cache, and less aggressive cacheing/fetching algorithms.
- duskwuff 5y agoDDR4 would require a significantly larger and more complex memory controller, and wouldn't improve performance. (This isn't exactly a high-performance SoC -- while no clock speed is listed, I suspect it's in the sub-GHz range.)
- bradfa 5y agoThere's a bunch of reasons, here's a few I've heard or thought of myself: * DDR2 is generally 1.8V. There's probably already a need for 1.8V logic within this SOC, so the power rail is "free." DDR3, DDR3L, and all the variants of DDR4 use a lower voltage. No one wants another power supply rail just to power some internal-to-the-SOC memory if they don't have to. * DDR2 is easily available in single die x16 (data bus width) 64MB (512Mb) sizes. DDR3 may be available in this size, but DDR4 is almost certainly not available or would require buying dies which don't sell a lot so becomes risky. * DDR2 in single-die configurations is super simple to hook up. * DDR2 in this size die isn't going away any time soon and may likely be the cheapest way to get a smaller amount of RAM. * SIP vendors often can negotiate very good and stable pricing for RAM, which is a big benefit to the PCB design integrator as they then don't have as crazy of price fluctuations which are common in the RAM market. This makes the SIP more attractive to some customers (the PCB designer, not the end user). * DDR2 can likely keep this speed of CPU fed with data fast enough that the RAM won't be the bottleneck for many workloads.
- andrewstuart 5y agoThese interesting little chips are useless without great software support and they rarely have that.
- Shadonototra 5y agowhat do you mean by "software support"? it's a linux capable 10 dollar chip
- teraflop 5y agoThere are tons of SoCs that theoretically support Linux, but in practice rely on binary blobs or out-of-tree drivers. Getting them to work with anything other than the hand-picked, patched kernel versions provided by the manufacturer can be a nightmare.
- bradfa 5y agoYes, but you can also look at it as a great way to start contributing to the upstream Linux kernel. Take the vendor's horrible drivers and clean them up, then submit them upstream. You get to learn new things and contribute to Linux, which has varying amounts of value depending upon who you ask, but also you'll make the next person who buys one of these less likely to complain that mainline Linux doesn't support it. Not a ton can easily be done about binary blobs, especially if those blobs have EULAs which prohibit reverse engineering. But there are always ways and doing so would be a great school or hobby project.
- IshKebab 5y ago"You can also look at this lack of support as a great way to start doing all the work yourself!"
- imtringued 5y agoUpstreamed kernel drivers. A lot of companies just fork the kernel, throw in their modifications and then make you run their "official" image available in some random person's google drive. This was particularly common with Allwinner but everyone with the proprietary ARM GPU drivers also had the problem that they only supported old kernel versions.
- Sophistifunk 5y agoSo you can have lots of ram, XOR useful video out. Great.
- nqzero 5y agois there a cheap sbc or soc from an atleast-somewhat-reputable source that comes pre-loaded with linux ?
- hulitu 5y agoFinally a RISC-V affordable computer.
- teleforce 5y agoThe amount of built-in 64MB RAM is equivalent to the typical RAM for 1995 - 97 PC era [1]. Someone actually offered me to buy his used PC for £400 back in 1997 and how dirt cheap this SoC would sell (£2) is really mind-boggling. [1]https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-capacity-of-RAM-in-1995-2015 https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-capacity-of-RAM-in-1995-20...