5 ms·

Framework Laptop feature requests – RISC-V Mainboard (2021)

peter_d_sherman 3y ago
I'd also vote for an FPGA Mainboard, ideally Lattice, ideally iCE40, and ideally compatible with Project IceStorm (Yosys, Arachne-pnr, and IceStorm) open source tools: https://github.com/YosysHQ/icestorm https://github.com/YosysHQ/icestorm Think something similar to MiSTer FPGA -- but in a laptop form factor, and able to run all sorts of "soft" CPUs on it, including (but not limited to) the following: https://opencores.org/projects?expanded=Processor https://opencores.org/projects?expanded=Processor
- duskwuff 3y ago
  > I'd also vote for an FPGA Mainboard, ideally Lattice, ideally iCE40 That wouldn't be usable as the main board of a laptop. The iCE40 series consists entirely of small, low-power FPGAs. They're neither large nor fast, and they don't have a lot of I/Os. They can fit a soft core CPU, but with little room to spare, no external memory controller, and at a relatively low Fmax (like, maybe 50 MHz with a lucky P&R run). They're neat parts, but this isn't what they're for. The ECP5 series (also Lattice) might be somewhat more suitable, but it's still no replacement for a fixed-function CPU. Reconfigurability comes with a dramatic penalty to speed and power consumption. > able to run all sorts of "soft" CPUs on it, including (but not limited to) the following: For what it's worth, OpenCores is basically a junkyard. Most of what you see there is abandoned and barely functional, if at all.
  - jychang 3y ago
    Yes but when is apple going to release the iFPGA?
    - duskwuff 3y ago
      Technically, they already did: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW682AM/A/apple-afterburner-card https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW682AM/A/apple-afterburn... Under the hood, it's a Xilinx Ultrascale+ (XCKU15P) FPGA on a card.
  - metalforever 3y ago
    I think they meant the supplemental processing. I am also looking for this FPGA solution.
  - maven29 3y ago
    East asian vendors like Efinix seem to have high spec parts (with LPDDR4, PCIE4) at low prices and actual availability, without the ITAR troubles you see with US parts.
  - peter_d_sherman 3y ago
    duskwuff: I'm more than happy to let you have your ideal laptop, with the fastest, latest most cutting-edge Intel or AMD chip... Why won't you let me have my ideal laptop -- with an iCE40 FPGA? My value system is that of simplicity, verifyability, transparency, open hardware -- and open software of all layers of the computing stack... I don't care about MHz, 50 is plenty -- if that's what it takes to get all of the above. If there's another FPGA which is faster yet still compatible with all open source tools, feel free to name it (and give an URL to the open source toolchain for it). At present, I am not aware of one... >For what it's worth, OpenCores is basically a junkyard. For what it's worth, most commercial CPUs are basically transparency trainwrecks. Also, I'd leave it to each individual reader to make their own determination if OpenCores has value to them or not. Some will not understand its whyness and thus not value it. But I'd rather let it be their own individual choice. Also, you should know that many individuals put a lot of their own unpaid hard work into their projects on OpenCores. A lot of blood, sweat and tears. A lot of hard work, unpaid hard work -- to donate the results of that hard work to the community. Painting OpenCores with a broad brush and broadly labeling OpenCores as "Most of what you see there is abandoned and barely functional" greatly disparages the work, the hard work of all of the people who put their blood sweat and tears into their projects there. Many OpenCores projects are complete, do work, and are models, absolutely stellar models of transparency and individual and community effort. I know that I for one value OpenCores and the work of everyone involved greatly, greatly. Have you personally tested each and every project on OpenCores? If you haven't -- then how do you presume to know the value? Have you personally downloaded and tested even one complete project from OpenCores? ? OpenCores has information which tells you if a project is complete or not, if it is working or not, and which phase of development it is in... one wouldn't select an unfinished project unless one were interested in learning from it and/or helping to complete it... Point is -- some of us (and this would include EE students and others potentially interested in CPU/Processor design, other present/future chip designers and educators and the like) -- would see value, great value in OpenCores... Again, you are free to have your ideal laptop, with the fastest, latest most cutting-edge Intel or AMD chip, or whatever you want, with whatever components you want... I would politely ask for the reciprocal grant of freedom in selecting my ideal laptop, with my ideal components, inside of the value system I have explained, above.
- elromulous 3y ago
  Wouldn't this be crazy slow?
  - peter_d_sherman 3y ago
    For the latest bloated OS, yes.
  - xodjmk 3y ago
    Yes, and quite limited. The MiSTer hardware, and other similar platforms are good for emulating ancient video game processors and running 8-bit style video games. This is a fun thing to do I guess if you like that. Modern high performance FPGA's, meaning AMD/Xilinx since that is the only option, can handle prototyping modern CPU's, including RISC-V, as soft processors. This is great for R&D, but FPGA's have hardware ARM cores built in, specifically because they are much more efficient and have existing ecosystems. There are other options for hardware RISC-V CPUs, but not really a SoC style FPGA+RISC-V combination. that I am aware of.
- not_your_vase 3y ago
  Why would you want that? While soft CPUs are fun and interesting, they are not really considered to be an ideal solution for anything. More like "well, that's what we have to use due to not having an actual CPU, even though we need one. Either this, or nothing.".
  - metalforever 3y ago
    There are very good reasons to want this. A big one is being able to perform computing without the prying eyes of a corporation, for example if you disagree with the idea of large companies making money off of your data. As a different idea, perhaps you might want to do something with Amiga or old game consoles, and you are developing a game for this. One reason you might want to do this is to teach yourself better 68k assembly language. This is a useful skill to have in certain niches in software security. Another good one is if you are into homebrew computers or are a computer or electrical engineer. Perhaps you would like to make your own processor, or collaborate with your friends on making a processor.
    - not_your_vase 3y ago
      But it's not like any of this is impossible to do today. Want to learn assembly of some old CPU, or write a game? Buy a Zynq board, or grab an emulator. It's not like you can't do any of this, because Framework (anyone else) isn't creating hardware for it... there is just simply no mass appeal for consumers. As a half-joke, half-serious question: how do you know that Lattice isn't backdooring all their FPGAs, sending home everything you run through their bird-drone network?
      - metalforever 3y ago
        Here is a post from an expert answering your question about the FPGA thing: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5706 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5706 I do not want exactly what you are suggesting. What I am into is homebrew computing and trusted compute. I can't have either of these things by just getting a zynq board. The game issue, as you noted, is quite trivial to solve.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  Fun weekend project idea: integrate the Fomu[0] into a USB-C Framework module. [0] https://www.adafruit.com/product/4332 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4332
tony-allan 3y ago
If you are keen to try something sooner… https://www.pine64.org/2023/04/10/pinetab-v-and-pinetab2-launch/ https://www.pine64.org/2023/04/10/pinetab-v-and-pinetab2-lau...
- bodge5000 3y ago
  Also this (though its a bit niche I suppose) https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/devterm-kit-r01 https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/devterm-kit-r01
  - brucehoult 3y ago
    Small screen and around 8x slower than the PineTab-V, between 1.0 GHz vs 1.5, single-issue vs dual-issue (good for ~1.5x), and one core vs four cores. Plus 1 GB RAM vs 4 or 8 GB. The PineTab-V is at least around the same speed as the Arm-based PineTab2, with the SiFive U74 being very comparable to (even a bit better than) the Arm A55 at the same MHz. In these devices the Arm is at 1.8 GHz vs the RISC-V at 1.5 but that's pretty minor. Also the Arm has NEON SIMD while that generation of RISC-V doesn't have SIMD or Vector -- the D1 and TH1520 do have 128 bit vectors, though standard software doesn't support that, so it's only whatever you write yourself.
  - squarefoot 3y ago
    Very niche indeed. I admit I love the look and would like to have one to tinker with and use for various electronics related projects, but price vs performance is definitely in favor of the PineTab-V. I would however seriously consider buying an edition with no brains, only keyboard plus trackball, LVDS/HDMI/DP/* capable screen, a battery holder and related charging circuitry, then enough internal space to be filled with whatever board the user already has handy, and possibly mounting frames compatible with most known boards (RPi, OrangePi, NanopPi, Odroids, etc). There is already something like that that can use RPi compute modules and similar others, but I'm talking about the full boards, of which almost everyone has a couple unused in a drawer.
- firstlink 3y ago
  I recommend reading sifive's errata, at least the ones it's possible to get ahold of. They are consistently wild, for multiple CPU IP generations. Some paraphrases that come to mind: "mmu doesn't work; workaround: don't use it" and "exception cause register not sign-extended; workaround: don't cause page faults on addresses in that half of memory".
metalforever 3y ago
Yeah this is why I have held off on buying a Framework too. I want a Risc solution, but also preferably the FPGA mainboard idea with the OpenCores for the supplemental processing.
photonbeam 3y ago
Id want to see the biggest riscv core possible, so it could approach laptop level expectations
- brucehoult 3y ago
  Right now the fastest RISC-V SoC available is the TH1520, similar to a Pi 4. Sipeed are selling the Lichee Pi 4A for $119 with 8 GB RAM and 16 GB eMMC (cheaper and more expensive configurations are coming soon). They are planning a laptop to take the same Lichee Module 4A. If Intel starts selling the "Horse Creek" SoC on the open market then that will be more like RK3588 class -- the best you can get on an Arm SBC right now. The next couple of years are going to see probably 50% faster RISC-V SoCs every six months on average.
KingOfCoders 3y ago
I see a great future for RISCV, but at the current point it's so far behind everyone else in performance, it's nice to play around but not fast enough for anything except web surfing on a GUI. (Wanted to switch my SBC work from ARM to RISCV but it looks that you need to put in a lot of effort to get Linux reliably going). [Edit] ARM has less legacy than x86, but RISCV has less legacy than ARM. Intels move to drop 16 and 32 bit modes in the future and some commands seems to show that dropping legacy makes your CPU faster or more energy efficient (less complex) if nothing else you can replace the die space with caches.
- Shawnj2 3y ago
  An ARM framework main board, either using a cheap MediaTek/similar smartphone grade processor, making the main board a Pi Compute Module breakout, or maybe one of the Windows capable ARM processors would be a nice way to sell a low cost/high power efficiency framework.
- snvzz 3y ago
  >(Wanted to switch my SBC work from ARM to RISCV but it looks that you need to put in a lot of effort to get Linux reliably going). I got a VisionFive2 (~$100) and I am impressed with the progress made since it shipped in February.

I'd also vote for an FPGA Mainboard, ideally Lattice, ideally iCE40, and ideally compatible with Project IceStorm (Yosys, Arachne-pnr, and IceStorm) open source tools: https://github.com/YosysHQ/icestorm https://github.com/YosysHQ/icestorm Think something similar to MiSTer FPGA -- but in a laptop form factor, and able to run all sorts of "soft" CPUs on it, including (but not limited to) the following: https://opencores.org/projects?expanded=Processor https://opencores.org/projects?expanded=Processor

duskwuff 3y ago
> I'd also vote for an FPGA Mainboard, ideally Lattice, ideally iCE40 That wouldn't be usable as the main board of a laptop. The iCE40 series consists entirely of small, low-power FPGAs. They're neither large nor fast, and they don't have a lot of I/Os. They can fit a soft core CPU, but with little room to spare, no external memory controller, and at a relatively low Fmax (like, maybe 50 MHz with a lucky P&R run). They're neat parts, but this isn't what they're for. The ECP5 series (also Lattice) might be somewhat more suitable, but it's still no replacement for a fixed-function CPU. Reconfigurability comes with a dramatic penalty to speed and power consumption. > able to run all sorts of "soft" CPUs on it, including (but not limited to) the following: For what it's worth, OpenCores is basically a junkyard. Most of what you see there is abandoned and barely functional, if at all.
- jychang 3y ago
  Yes but when is apple going to release the iFPGA?
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    Technically, they already did: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW682AM/A/apple-afterburner-card https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW682AM/A/apple-afterburn... Under the hood, it's a Xilinx Ultrascale+ (XCKU15P) FPGA on a card.
- metalforever 3y ago
  I think they meant the supplemental processing. I am also looking for this FPGA solution.
- maven29 3y ago
  East asian vendors like Efinix seem to have high spec parts (with LPDDR4, PCIE4) at low prices and actual availability, without the ITAR troubles you see with US parts.
- peter_d_sherman 3y ago
  duskwuff: I'm more than happy to let you have your ideal laptop, with the fastest, latest most cutting-edge Intel or AMD chip... Why won't you let me have my ideal laptop -- with an iCE40 FPGA? My value system is that of simplicity, verifyability, transparency, open hardware -- and open software of all layers of the computing stack... I don't care about MHz, 50 is plenty -- if that's what it takes to get all of the above. If there's another FPGA which is faster yet still compatible with all open source tools, feel free to name it (and give an URL to the open source toolchain for it). At present, I am not aware of one... >For what it's worth, OpenCores is basically a junkyard. For what it's worth, most commercial CPUs are basically transparency trainwrecks. Also, I'd leave it to each individual reader to make their own determination if OpenCores has value to them or not. Some will not understand its whyness and thus not value it. But I'd rather let it be their own individual choice. Also, you should know that many individuals put a lot of their own unpaid hard work into their projects on OpenCores. A lot of blood, sweat and tears. A lot of hard work, unpaid hard work -- to donate the results of that hard work to the community. Painting OpenCores with a broad brush and broadly labeling OpenCores as "Most of what you see there is abandoned and barely functional" greatly disparages the work, the hard work of all of the people who put their blood sweat and tears into their projects there. Many OpenCores projects are complete, do work, and are models, absolutely stellar models of transparency and individual and community effort. I know that I for one value OpenCores and the work of everyone involved greatly, greatly. Have you personally tested each and every project on OpenCores? If you haven't -- then how do you presume to know the value? Have you personally downloaded and tested even one complete project from OpenCores? ? OpenCores has information which tells you if a project is complete or not, if it is working or not, and which phase of development it is in... one wouldn't select an unfinished project unless one were interested in learning from it and/or helping to complete it... Point is -- some of us (and this would include EE students and others potentially interested in CPU/Processor design, other present/future chip designers and educators and the like) -- would see value, great value in OpenCores... Again, you are free to have your ideal laptop, with the fastest, latest most cutting-edge Intel or AMD chip, or whatever you want, with whatever components you want... I would politely ask for the reciprocal grant of freedom in selecting my ideal laptop, with my ideal components, inside of the value system I have explained, above.
elromulous 3y ago
Wouldn't this be crazy slow?
- peter_d_sherman 3y ago
  For the latest bloated OS, yes.
- xodjmk 3y ago
  Yes, and quite limited. The MiSTer hardware, and other similar platforms are good for emulating ancient video game processors and running 8-bit style video games. This is a fun thing to do I guess if you like that. Modern high performance FPGA's, meaning AMD/Xilinx since that is the only option, can handle prototyping modern CPU's, including RISC-V, as soft processors. This is great for R&D, but FPGA's have hardware ARM cores built in, specifically because they are much more efficient and have existing ecosystems. There are other options for hardware RISC-V CPUs, but not really a SoC style FPGA+RISC-V combination. that I am aware of.
not_your_vase 3y ago
Why would you want that? While soft CPUs are fun and interesting, they are not really considered to be an ideal solution for anything. More like "well, that's what we have to use due to not having an actual CPU, even though we need one. Either this, or nothing.".
- metalforever 3y ago
  There are very good reasons to want this. A big one is being able to perform computing without the prying eyes of a corporation, for example if you disagree with the idea of large companies making money off of your data. As a different idea, perhaps you might want to do something with Amiga or old game consoles, and you are developing a game for this. One reason you might want to do this is to teach yourself better 68k assembly language. This is a useful skill to have in certain niches in software security. Another good one is if you are into homebrew computers or are a computer or electrical engineer. Perhaps you would like to make your own processor, or collaborate with your friends on making a processor.
  - not_your_vase 3y ago
    But it's not like any of this is impossible to do today. Want to learn assembly of some old CPU, or write a game? Buy a Zynq board, or grab an emulator. It's not like you can't do any of this, because Framework (anyone else) isn't creating hardware for it... there is just simply no mass appeal for consumers. As a half-joke, half-serious question: how do you know that Lattice isn't backdooring all their FPGAs, sending home everything you run through their bird-drone network?
    - metalforever 3y ago
      Here is a post from an expert answering your question about the FPGA thing: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5706 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5706 I do not want exactly what you are suggesting. What I am into is homebrew computing and trusted compute. I can't have either of these things by just getting a zynq board. The game issue, as you noted, is quite trivial to solve.
smoldesu 3y ago
Fun weekend project idea: integrate the Fomu[0] into a USB-C Framework module. [0] https://www.adafruit.com/product/4332 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4332

tony-allan 3y ago

If you are keen to try something sooner… https://www.pine64.org/2023/04/10/pinetab-v-and-pinetab2-launch/ https://www.pine64.org/2023/04/10/pinetab-v-and-pinetab2-lau...

bodge5000 3y ago
Also this (though its a bit niche I suppose) https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/devterm-kit-r01 https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/devterm-kit-r01
- brucehoult 3y ago
  Small screen and around 8x slower than the PineTab-V, between 1.0 GHz vs 1.5, single-issue vs dual-issue (good for ~1.5x), and one core vs four cores. Plus 1 GB RAM vs 4 or 8 GB. The PineTab-V is at least around the same speed as the Arm-based PineTab2, with the SiFive U74 being very comparable to (even a bit better than) the Arm A55 at the same MHz. In these devices the Arm is at 1.8 GHz vs the RISC-V at 1.5 but that's pretty minor. Also the Arm has NEON SIMD while that generation of RISC-V doesn't have SIMD or Vector -- the D1 and TH1520 do have 128 bit vectors, though standard software doesn't support that, so it's only whatever you write yourself.
- squarefoot 3y ago
  Very niche indeed. I admit I love the look and would like to have one to tinker with and use for various electronics related projects, but price vs performance is definitely in favor of the PineTab-V. I would however seriously consider buying an edition with no brains, only keyboard plus trackball, LVDS/HDMI/DP/* capable screen, a battery holder and related charging circuitry, then enough internal space to be filled with whatever board the user already has handy, and possibly mounting frames compatible with most known boards (RPi, OrangePi, NanopPi, Odroids, etc). There is already something like that that can use RPi compute modules and similar others, but I'm talking about the full boards, of which almost everyone has a couple unused in a drawer.
firstlink 3y ago
I recommend reading sifive's errata, at least the ones it's possible to get ahold of. They are consistently wild, for multiple CPU IP generations. Some paraphrases that come to mind: "mmu doesn't work; workaround: don't use it" and "exception cause register not sign-extended; workaround: don't cause page faults on addresses in that half of memory".

metalforever 3y ago

Yeah this is why I have held off on buying a Framework too. I want a Risc solution, but also preferably the FPGA mainboard idea with the OpenCores for the supplemental processing.

photonbeam 3y ago

Id want to see the biggest riscv core possible, so it could approach laptop level expectations

brucehoult 3y ago
Right now the fastest RISC-V SoC available is the TH1520, similar to a Pi 4. Sipeed are selling the Lichee Pi 4A for $119 with 8 GB RAM and 16 GB eMMC (cheaper and more expensive configurations are coming soon). They are planning a laptop to take the same Lichee Module 4A. If Intel starts selling the "Horse Creek" SoC on the open market then that will be more like RK3588 class -- the best you can get on an Arm SBC right now. The next couple of years are going to see probably 50% faster RISC-V SoCs every six months on average.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

I see a great future for RISCV, but at the current point it's so far behind everyone else in performance, it's nice to play around but not fast enough for anything except web surfing on a GUI. (Wanted to switch my SBC work from ARM to RISCV but it looks that you need to put in a lot of effort to get Linux reliably going). [Edit] ARM has less legacy than x86, but RISCV has less legacy than ARM. Intels move to drop 16 and 32 bit modes in the future and some commands seems to show that dropping legacy makes your CPU faster or more energy efficient (less complex) if nothing else you can replace the die space with caches.

Shawnj2 3y ago
An ARM framework main board, either using a cheap MediaTek/similar smartphone grade processor, making the main board a Pi Compute Module breakout, or maybe one of the Windows capable ARM processors would be a nice way to sell a low cost/high power efficiency framework.
snvzz 3y ago
>(Wanted to switch my SBC work from ARM to RISCV but it looks that you need to put in a lot of effort to get Linux reliably going). I got a VisionFive2 (~$100) and I am impressed with the progress made since it shipped in February.