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Where would I go about buying a serious risc-v PC? So far, all I've seen are either tiny devices without much computation power, or emulation support. Is risc-

Where would I go about buying a serious risc-v PC? So far, all I've seen are either tiny devices without much computation power, or emulation support. Is risc-v a legitimate platform for serious computation or is it targeted at embedded devices?

snvzz 3y ago
If you want to play with running Linux on RISC-V today or doing any porting work, VisionFive2 is where it's at. They are serious about upstream support[0]. 0. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan
saagarjha 3y ago
There are people working to make server-level chips for it but none of them are really quite ready yet.
- snvzz 3y ago
  Ventana Veyron is due before year end. Tenstorrent Ascalon (led by who was Apple M1 lead architect) promises competitive performance with projected AMD Zen5, and is due 2024 (same as Zen5).
  - imtringued 3y ago
    ARM had decades to get into the server market and they are still struggling. Sure AWS' server instances are reasonably good but competitive RISC-V server hardware will be coming out over the next five years and then it is over for ARM. I personally thought that Microsoft was going to abandon x86 for ARM in 2017 because it means they can lock the platform down even further with applications only being installable from their proprietary store and the bootloader being locked to windows only. Six years later nothing happened. ARM is on its deathbed.
    - snvzz 3y ago
      re: AWS, I wouldn't be surprised if the next iteration of graviton is RISC-V, or the one after.
      - my123 3y ago
        Delusion.
        yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        Possibly, but it'd be nice if you explained why. If AWS can get semi custom chips for one architecture, why not another?
        my123 3y ago
        RISC-V is not remotely anywhere near ready for such a thing. On my side we really don't understand this push beyond embedded at all.
        Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
        For one, Graviton currently uses ARM cores, not just the ARM ISA. Anything can happen though.
panick21_ 3y ago
RISC-V by design and be ambition is for everything, serious compute and embedded. Its just that its far easier to release embedded chips and that standard for that was ready far earlier. Serious compute simply takes far longer in terms of product cycle and the relevant standard came far later. A lot of use for RISC-V is also not in places that is target at end consumer devices. There is not much yet in terms of RISC-V PC? The HiFive Pro P550 should be coming out at some point. Or the Unmatched currently. https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-pro-p550 https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-pro-p550 Companies working on high performance RISC-V are: Esperanto, SiFive, Ventana Micro Systems and Tenstorrent.
- httgp 3y ago
  Noob question - are they somehow better at AI/ML workloads than regular x86_64?
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Well, of course I don't have performance numbers or anything. In general, the RISC-V Vector Unit has very much been designed to make those workloads faster. Many new AI/ML companies are using RISC-V and Vectors but usually with some of their own non-standard stuff. Esperanto has Vectors with TPU. TensTorrent has done a lot of work on software to use their chip as a dataflow engine. And so on and so on. So essentially, Nvida is making a huge amount of money and all those companies will want a piece of it. I would say RISC-V Vector is a better design then x86 SIMD. RISC-V is also not done, there are efforts to standardize things like matrix and other things used for AI/ML workloads.
- snvzz 3y ago
  And Rivos.
camel-cdr 3y ago
https://milkv.io/pioneer https://milkv.io/pioneer seems to be what you are looking for, but I'd only recommend it for developers who are working on getting things like gpu drivers ported. For most development smaller SBCs are enough, and I'd recommend waiting for RVA22/23 profile supporting hardware before spending a lot of money, because most current chips use the non standard vector isa and don't support all profile extensions, because they where created before everything was ratified.
rwmj 3y ago
At least 4 companies are working on server-class chips, targeting "Xeon-like" performance. Of course without actual hardware to test you should take those claims with a grain of salt for the moment. If you want a cheap, low-end single board computer you can use right now, then I'd go for either the Vision Five 2 or the Sipeed Lichee Pi 4A. Performance won't be that great, but it'll run Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu or Yocto distros pretty much out of the box. I'm working on a Hifive Unmatched vs VF2 vs Sipeed vs Raspberry Pi 4B performance comparison right now, which will appear on https://rwmj.wordpress.com https://rwmj.wordpress.com
IshKebab 3y ago
I think there are a few reasons why there's no point currently: * There aren't really any available for a reasonable price. * A lot of the desktop related stuff is still in the process of being specified and ratified. If you buy something now it will probably use a load of ad-hoc features especially for booting. * It doesn't really make any difference to running software, unless you are writing assembly. If you just want to play around with RISC-V assembly an emulator or cheap embedded hardware is a lot better option.

snvzz 3y ago

If you want to play with running Linux on RISC-V today or doing any porting work, VisionFive2 is where it's at. They are serious about upstream support[0]. 0. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan

saagarjha 3y ago

There are people working to make server-level chips for it but none of them are really quite ready yet.

snvzz 3y ago
Ventana Veyron is due before year end. Tenstorrent Ascalon (led by who was Apple M1 lead architect) promises competitive performance with projected AMD Zen5, and is due 2024 (same as Zen5).
- imtringued 3y ago
  ARM had decades to get into the server market and they are still struggling. Sure AWS' server instances are reasonably good but competitive RISC-V server hardware will be coming out over the next five years and then it is over for ARM. I personally thought that Microsoft was going to abandon x86 for ARM in 2017 because it means they can lock the platform down even further with applications only being installable from their proprietary store and the bootloader being locked to windows only. Six years later nothing happened. ARM is on its deathbed.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    re: AWS, I wouldn't be surprised if the next iteration of graviton is RISC-V, or the one after.
    - my123 3y ago
      Delusion.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        Possibly, but it'd be nice if you explained why. If AWS can get semi custom chips for one architecture, why not another?
        my123 3y ago
        RISC-V is not remotely anywhere near ready for such a thing. On my side we really don't understand this push beyond embedded at all.
        Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
        For one, Graviton currently uses ARM cores, not just the ARM ISA. Anything can happen though.

panick21_ 3y ago

RISC-V by design and be ambition is for everything, serious compute and embedded. Its just that its far easier to release embedded chips and that standard for that was ready far earlier. Serious compute simply takes far longer in terms of product cycle and the relevant standard came far later. A lot of use for RISC-V is also not in places that is target at end consumer devices. There is not much yet in terms of RISC-V PC? The HiFive Pro P550 should be coming out at some point. Or the Unmatched currently. https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-pro-p550 https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-pro-p550 Companies working on high performance RISC-V are: Esperanto, SiFive, Ventana Micro Systems and Tenstorrent.

httgp 3y ago
Noob question - are they somehow better at AI/ML workloads than regular x86_64?
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Well, of course I don't have performance numbers or anything. In general, the RISC-V Vector Unit has very much been designed to make those workloads faster. Many new AI/ML companies are using RISC-V and Vectors but usually with some of their own non-standard stuff. Esperanto has Vectors with TPU. TensTorrent has done a lot of work on software to use their chip as a dataflow engine. And so on and so on. So essentially, Nvida is making a huge amount of money and all those companies will want a piece of it. I would say RISC-V Vector is a better design then x86 SIMD. RISC-V is also not done, there are efforts to standardize things like matrix and other things used for AI/ML workloads.
snvzz 3y ago
And Rivos.

camel-cdr 3y ago

https://milkv.io/pioneer https://milkv.io/pioneer seems to be what you are looking for, but I'd only recommend it for developers who are working on getting things like gpu drivers ported. For most development smaller SBCs are enough, and I'd recommend waiting for RVA22/23 profile supporting hardware before spending a lot of money, because most current chips use the non standard vector isa and don't support all profile extensions, because they where created before everything was ratified.

rwmj 3y ago

At least 4 companies are working on server-class chips, targeting "Xeon-like" performance. Of course without actual hardware to test you should take those claims with a grain of salt for the moment. If you want a cheap, low-end single board computer you can use right now, then I'd go for either the Vision Five 2 or the Sipeed Lichee Pi 4A. Performance won't be that great, but it'll run Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu or Yocto distros pretty much out of the box. I'm working on a Hifive Unmatched vs VF2 vs Sipeed vs Raspberry Pi 4B performance comparison right now, which will appear on https://rwmj.wordpress.com https://rwmj.wordpress.com

IshKebab 3y ago

I think there are a few reasons why there's no point currently: * There aren't really any available for a reasonable price. * A lot of the desktop related stuff is still in the process of being specified and ratified. If you buy something now it will probably use a load of ad-hoc features especially for booting. * It doesn't really make any difference to running software, unless you are writing assembly. If you just want to play around with RISC-V assembly an emulator or cheap embedded hardware is a lot better option.