Many other other machines already shipping (Banana Pi BPI-F3) or announced (SpacemiT Muse Book, Muse Box, Muse Pi; Sipeed Lichee Pi 3A) are using the same SoC.

Many other other machines already shipping (Banana Pi BPI-F3) or announced (SpacemiT Muse Book, Muse Box, Muse Pi; Sipeed Lichee Pi 3A) are using the same SoC. The BPI-F3 with 4 GB RAM costs $74, models with 8 GB and 16 GB are on the way. By virtue of having 8 cores it's the fastest cheap RISC-V SoC currently available (only the 64 core SG2042 in Milk-V's own $2500 "Pioneer" workstation is faster). It's also one of only two currently shipping SoCs supporting the latest RVA22+Vector ISA specification. The other one, which shipped in November, is single core with 0.5 GB RAM, so this is far more practical as a PC. So you can be pretty sure there is going to be a LOT of attention and work on this SoC. At least until it is overtaken by something faster. Two generations of faster, but still inexpensive, SoCs are expected this year: 1) SiFive P550-based quad core with about 2x the per-core performance, 1.5x from IPC and 1.5x from MHz, also RVA22 but lacking vector; 2) SiFive P670-based 16 core SG2380 with about 3x the per-core performance, 2x from IPC and similar MHz to P550, full RVA22+Vector. This SoC will leapfrog currently shipping (or known) Arm SBCs such as the Pi 5 and RK3588 boards (Rock 5, Orange Pi 5). There is also the 64 core SG2044, an SG2042 updated to RVA22+Vector specifications. It will still have about the same per-core performance as this SpacemiT SoC (but a LOT of cores), and I don't expect it to be cheap. The biggest problem with RISC-V at the moment is that we're seeing -- and will continue to see for some years -- a 2x or more per year improvement in performance of inexpensive mass-produced hardware, so ANYTHING you buy is sure to be quickly eclipsed. Similar to the 1990s in x86 land, which started with everyone using the 33 MHz 80386 and ended with 1.2 GHz Pentium III and the announcement of Pentium 4 and Amd64/x86_64. Except current RISC-V hardware (e.g. this machine) is already at late Pentium III performance per core (but 8 cores and 64 bit and better than AVX vector/SIMD), with early Core-i7 performance (but more cores) coming THIS YEAR. Everyone is quickly converging on the RVA22 instruction set spec (with or without the optional Vector), a big step up from the previous RV64GC (now renamed RVA20) common base ISA. The RVA23 spec (which among other things makes Vector compulsory) will be ratified soon, with hardware in maybe 12-24 months.