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Lichee Pi 4A
- irusensei 4y agoIt has 2 NICs and an optional router case. So another router board without encryption hardware extensions eh. Why people keep doing this?
- magicalhippo 4y agoThe block diagram shows it has a Trusted Execution Environment[1], with AES, SHA etc. So not nothing, or? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment
- irusensei 4y agoI’m pretty sure it is a different thing. I’ve looked into specs for C910 and E902 and couldn’t find any mention about encryption which is a very new thing on Risc-V. A router would have very lackluster VPN performance if it has to rely on raw CPU. https://riscv.org/blog/2021/09/risc-v-cryptography-extensions-task-group-announces-public-review-of-the-scalar-cryptography-extensions/ https://riscv.org/blog/2021/09/risc-v-cryptography-extension... BTW can the people who downvote me at least give me a reason why am I wrong? Would gladly hear it.
- ilyt 4y agoIt would probably have just fine encryption performance for majority of uses. Hell, wireguard isn't even using AES in the first place
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- magicalhippo 4y agoI see the ROMA laptop[1] will be using the same TH1520 processor, and there it says the laptop will have an ARM SC300[2] TEE. It could be a separate chip ala this[3], but given the block diagram on the Sipeed page is for the TH1520 SoC, surely it must be on-chip. Will be interesting to see. [1]: https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/10/04/alibaba-t-head-th1520-risc-v-processor-to-power-the-roma-laptop/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/10/04/alibaba-t-head-th152... [2]: https://developer.arm.com/Processors/SecurCore%20SC300 https://developer.arm.com/Processors/SecurCore%20SC300 [3]: https://www.st.com/en/secure-mcus/st33j1m5.html https://www.st.com/en/secure-mcus/st33j1m5.html
- snvzz 4y agoWith this particular set of extensions, I would not assume bad cryptography performance.
- teleforce 4y agoThis board is based on Sipeed LM4A and it can support up to 16GB RAM and 64GB flash [1]. [1] Sipeed LM4A – T-Head TH1520 RISC-V module to power Raspberry Pi 4 competitor and cluster board: https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/12/14/sipeed-lm4a-t-head-th1520-risc-v-module-to-power-raspberry-pi-4-competitor-and-cluster-board/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/12/14/sipeed-lm4a-t-head-t...
- davidcollantes 4y agoIs the preorder button working for anyone? Clicking it does nothing for me.
- yewenjie 4y agoEdit: Apparently this is working - https://sipeed.com/licheepi4a/order https://sipeed.com/licheepi4a/order Does not work for me either.
- minerva23 4y agoThis looks like a crowd funding thing. Anyone know the people running it? Are they reputable or might they pocket all the money and disappear?
- m00x 4y agoSipeed is a pretty big designer, but with the West/China issues over chips, I wouldn't take a wager on getting your boards without issue. You should also expect mid-level documentation if you do get them, it'll be Chinese-only support. This is why I stopped buying cheap Chinese electronics. It's great that you can get them for less, but then you spend 5x the time getting it to work properly.
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago[dead]
- znpy 4y agoDual gigabit ethernet is cool.
- sylware 4y agocan we get a noscript/basic (x)html page?
- tyingq 4y ago"4 / 8 / 16 GB 64bit LPDDR4X-3733" That's impressive in a dev board.
- nine_k 4y agoIt's almost enough to build a custom laptop. (It lacks an NVMe or SATA interface though.)
- mmatants 4y agoI also want to mention the Lichee Pi Nano, though it is much smaller and targeting a different use case: https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/08/17/licheepi-nano-cheap-sd-card-sized-linux-board/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/08/17/licheepi-nano-cheap-.... Made an embedded distro Buildroot config for that one some time ago (https://github.com/unframework/licheepi-nano-buildroot https://github.com/unframework/licheepi-nano-buildroot).
- netr0ute 4y agoI don't know why anybody would ever get the LicheePi Nano instead of the 4A or the regular LicheePi, because these two boards' main selling point is that they're RISC-V which the Nano isn't.
- nine_k 4y agoFor some, the physical size is key. Seeed Xiao, Lichee Nano, Beetle, etc fit where e.g. an Arduino Nano won't.
- thamer 4y agoYes the physical size can be important, and so can the power draw. Just like you wouldn't use a full-fledged Raspberry Pi for use cases where a Raspberry Pi Nano or other low-power microcontroller is enough.
- atdrummond 4y agoI can’t wait to get a cluster of 7 of these and run HaikuOS in a crazy modern BeBox.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- c0l0 4y agoNo matter any given SBC's hardware platform's apparent attractiveness: Give me mainline Linux support for all included devices/features, or give me (this particular product's eventual) death. Is there any info on how this make and model fares? The spec sheet speaks of "Debian / OpenWRT / Andriod" (sic!), but two misspellings in three names don't exactly inspire confidence... If I can only ever hope to install some manufacturer-bastardized spin of Ubuntu 14.04 with a heap of custom patches on top, I'll have to forever stick to Raspberry Pis instead, unfortunately.
- ilyt 4y agoEven rPIs don't pass your "mainline" criteria, Raspbian ships with patched kernel and I remember just few months ago having to use it just so stuff like camera works, while on mainline the video stream was giving me, uh, random pieces of working memory... And Device Tree makes me miss ISA bus and setting jumpers to right IRQ...
- doubled112 4y agoI’ll admit I was sticking to Pis because of the community and support, but is mainline support on the Raspberry Pi looking better these days? The Pi4 has been out a while now, and Fedora just added “support” Its in quotes because theres no WiFi, no Bluetooth, and I cannot get it to boot to desktop using their image. Arch Linux ARM has been pushing images that don’t boot on the 400 for over a year now, but if I install the Raspberry Pi kernel in a chroot before first boot it even works. What I’ve found is that if you want it to work you’re stuck on Raspberry Pi OS, a bastardized Debian distro, anyway. Is your experience different? There was a time there was choice and they just worked. Somehow it feels as though it has gone backward and I’m tinkering with some no-name made in China SBC again.
- squarefoot 4y ago> What I’ve found is that if you want it to work you’re stuck on Raspberry Pi OS, a bastardized Debian distro, anyway. Ambian, Dietpi, and Alpine all support it, along with many other boards that are not just easier to find these days but also cheaper and sometimes more powerful than the Raspberry Pi. https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://dietpi.com/#downloadinfo https://dietpi.com/#downloadinfo https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/ https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/
- robert_foss 4y agoWhat GPU is it built with? PowerVR?
- netr0ute 4y agoImagination something, and it's supposedly 4 times as fast as the one in the Raspberry Pi 4.
- robert_foss 4y agoAh cool. Good thing the Imagination PowerVR GPU is getting an open source driver now then.
- rwmj 4y agoDoes that follow? They might still be shipping a userspace blob or even a closed source kernel driver :-(
- robert_foss 4y agoYeah, who knows what they'll ship with. But it is at least theoretically possible to run an open source stack.
- psychphysic 4y agoOh well better get out the old credit card. So this isn't the same RISC-V CPU as from VisionFive2 and Pine64. It's an Alibaba core I believe[0]. Hopefully this doesn't cause worse fragmentation and slow much needed software and distro support. My worries previously on HN[1]. [0] https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/10/04/alibaba-t-head-th1520-risc-v-processor-to-power-the-roma-laptop/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/10/04/alibaba-t-head-th152... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34105528#34106450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34105528#34106450
- forinti 4y agoIt's nice that it offers 8/16GB of RAM. I could actually use one for work.
- dkjaudyeqooe 4y agoI agree and wish they'd all support NVMe as well (with 2 or 4 free PCIe lanes, maybe to the exclusion of USB 3 ports). That would make them practical for all sorts of things.
- _joel 4y agoLike http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-5.html http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontro... ?
- nine_k 4y agoPretty nice! Except no Wifi / BT when NVMe is used for storage. One of the USB3 ports could be used for wireless comms, of course.
- ris 4y agoThis. Seeing The cluster board made me think "build farm", but without good IO I can't see that being much fun.
- agumonkey 4y agoCurious to know power consumption too
- sircastor 4y agoI was just reading an interview with Eben Upton about RISC-Vs potential, and his response was that there aren’t any competitive-to-Cortex-A7 chips out there, and the OS support isn’t there. I guess we gotta start somewhere. Looking at the product page through, it seems like the designers are positioning this as a networking peripheral (at least with the expansion board)
- netr0ute 4y ago> an interview with Eben Upton about RISC-Vs potential This interview is now years-old and is now 100% false, as today we have several competitive-to-Cortex-A7 boards available and ready to ship right now.
- geerlingguy 4y agoThere was another interview just last week on the Explaining Computers YouTube channel and he did mention RISC-V again. He said that as long as ARM licensing is not too restrictive and expensive, it is much easier and cheaper to integrate ARM cores into SoC designs as they are currently much more widely supported, and core to core are faster than same-year RISC-V core designs. Remember that the A72 cores for the Pi 4 are like 7 years old now... the fastest available RISC-V cores are just catching up.
- netr0ute 4y ago> fastest available RISC-V cores are just catching up. Not entirely true, as SiFive has had the P550 and P650 for years, and now the P570 and P670. Those should be a lot faster and they're already available to anybody who wants to fill out an online form.
- sircastor 4y ago> it is much easier and cheaper to integrate ARM cores into SoC designs I recall reading that the Pi Zero form factor (or maybe the Pi Zero 2?) was a special SOC package where they put the memory stacked on top of the rest of the chip, which made the form factor work.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoDoes anyone know why the sudden increase in boards with 2 Ethernet ports?
- dmonitor 4y agoMight be because Edgerouters are no longer obtainable by reasonable means.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoBut those had 4+ ports; I guess you could put a dumb switch on one, but then you've got an additional device. Or maybe it's Good Enough™?
- geerlingguy 4y agoIf OpenWRT can be built for the board, it can make a tiny, silent gigabit router. Add on an M.2 slot and you could add on WiFi 6 or 6E, or a cellular modem, and do even more networking shenanigans. It's one of the few use cases where—with the right NIC, which can offload some of the processing from the slower SoC—they can be fairly efficient and actually competitive with classic consumer routers like those from ASUS, Netgear, etc.
- rfoo 4y agoOpenWRT-on-whatever-with-dual-eth-as-a-home-gateway gained a lot of popularity in China during the last two years. Besides the usual hobbyist use cases, it is particularly useful in China as people run VPN or those bizarre transparent proxies on them for getting around GFW. There are enough copy-paste ready tutorials that even "power users" are tempted to try doing so. Sure, this sounds niche enough to be negligible, but SBCs are always niche products. Currently the most popular "whatever" is $100 mini PCs, but <$40 SBCs have a significant price advantage.
- Havoc 4y ago> bizarre transparent proxies Any more detail on what is being done here? I don’t need to bypass the gfw, just curious
- dark-star 4y agoI wonder what the board will cost. I'm guessing around 100$ for the 8G variant?