5 ms·

Performance per core is the same as (even a little better than) Arm A72, as found in the Raspberry Pi 4 or -- more appropriately -- the Graviton 1, both from 20

Performance per core is the same as (even a little better than) Arm A72, as found in the Raspberry Pi 4 or -- more appropriately -- the Graviton 1, both from 2019, except it has 16x more cores than the Pi 4 and 4x more cores than the Graviton. That puts shipping RISC-V hardware four years behind Arm. By mid 2024, shipping RISC-V hardware will be competitive with Arm A76 SoCs such as the RK3588 (shipped on boards such as the Rock 5 and Orange Pi 5 1.5 to 2 years earlier) or the Raspberry Pi 5, which is only about 6 months ahead (I received mine, ordered at announcement, this week). By the end of 2024, shipping RISC-V hardware will have 16x Arm A78 equivalent cores, on a board that realistically will cost $300.

imtringued 3y ago
People seem to forget that before the introduction of A76 and the Neoverse cores ARM was incredibly slow compared to x86 with the exception of Apple's chips. High performance ARM cores are a recent innovation of the last five years.
ruslan 3y ago
How could it be same as ARM Cortex-A72 without SIMD (vector) instructions and being in-order ?
- brucehoult 3y ago
  The SG2042 SoC in the Milk-V Pioneer has Out-of-Order THead C910 cores with very similar design to an A72, and with dual 128 bit vector units (RISC-V V extension draft version 0.7.1).
klelatti 3y ago
Cortex A76 hardware was first available in 2018. Just because A76 happened to appear on an SBC 18 months or six months ago using this as a milestone doesn’t give a realistic impression of the relative timelines of the two architectures.
- brucehoult 3y ago
  Cortex A76 hardware was absolutely not available in 2018. That's when the IP for the core was announced. It takes years to get from that to mass-production hardware. The dates that SBCs came out is relevant, and a very consistent data after the announcement of the CPU core. C910 core announced July 2019, SBCs delivered June 2023 (Lichee Pi 4A) and December 2023 (Milk-V Pioneer). ~4 years U74 core announced October 2018, SBCs delivered February 2023. ~ 4/12 years A76 core announced May 2018, SBCs delivered in mid 2022 (Rock 5) to December 2023 (my peordered Pi 5 arrived this week). 4 - 5 1/2 years A72 core announced February 2015, SBCs delivered June 2019 (Pi 4). 4 1/2 years A53 core announced October 2012, SBCs delivered March 2016 (Pi 3, Odroid C2). 3 1/2 years Very high priced prototype hardware based on "shuttle run" chips can be available as much as two years earlier. High end phones are also often around the same time, as one or two privileged chip designers often get access to beta core IP well before announcement and can drop final RTL into an already designed SoC. Some things are also announced long before they are delivered, while others are announced when stock is already available. But actual delivery of SBCs to customers occurs a remarkably consistent amount of time after formal announcement of CPU cores.

imtringued 3y ago

People seem to forget that before the introduction of A76 and the Neoverse cores ARM was incredibly slow compared to x86 with the exception of Apple's chips. High performance ARM cores are a recent innovation of the last five years.

ruslan 3y ago

How could it be same as ARM Cortex-A72 without SIMD (vector) instructions and being in-order ?

brucehoult 3y ago
The SG2042 SoC in the Milk-V Pioneer has Out-of-Order THead C910 cores with very similar design to an A72, and with dual 128 bit vector units (RISC-V V extension draft version 0.7.1).

klelatti 3y ago

Cortex A76 hardware was first available in 2018. Just because A76 happened to appear on an SBC 18 months or six months ago using this as a milestone doesn’t give a realistic impression of the relative timelines of the two architectures.

brucehoult 3y ago
Cortex A76 hardware was absolutely not available in 2018. That's when the IP for the core was announced. It takes years to get from that to mass-production hardware. The dates that SBCs came out is relevant, and a very consistent data after the announcement of the CPU core. C910 core announced July 2019, SBCs delivered June 2023 (Lichee Pi 4A) and December 2023 (Milk-V Pioneer). ~4 years U74 core announced October 2018, SBCs delivered February 2023. ~ 4/12 years A76 core announced May 2018, SBCs delivered in mid 2022 (Rock 5) to December 2023 (my peordered Pi 5 arrived this week). 4 - 5 1/2 years A72 core announced February 2015, SBCs delivered June 2019 (Pi 4). 4 1/2 years A53 core announced October 2012, SBCs delivered March 2016 (Pi 3, Odroid C2). 3 1/2 years Very high priced prototype hardware based on "shuttle run" chips can be available as much as two years earlier. High end phones are also often around the same time, as one or two privileged chip designers often get access to beta core IP well before announcement and can drop final RTL into an already designed SoC. Some things are also announced long before they are delivered, while others are announced when stock is already available. But actual delivery of SBCs to customers occurs a remarkably consistent amount of time after formal announcement of CPU cores.