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DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13
- luyu_wu 2y agoTook me a while to figure out that the actual pricing was $200 USD for a mainboard (you have to untick value-added services). Definitely not the best pricing, but also not completely bad considering you get a 64GB microSD and case alongside? Looking forwards to the next-gen mainboard they hint at in the "value-added package" as the JH7110 really is quite a weak chip (even by RISC-V standards)...
- adgjlsfhk1 2y agothe price to functionality is pretty steep. 200 would seem about right for a dev board that supported rva23, but for a CPU without support for the extensions that the ecosystem is going to require it's hard to justify 200 for ~pi3 performance on an already outdated platform
- brucehoult 2y agoThe RVA23 spec has only just been ratified a couple of weeks ago. It will be a couple of years before there is hardware supporting it. A suitable RVA22+V chip (SpacemiT 8 core) has only been out on dedicated dev boards for a few months. That's probably going to be their 2025Q2 main board. Their 2025Q4 main board will be the first high performance RVA22+V one. If the chip happens ... it's struck some political (sanctions) problems. JH7110 is the right chip for a first board to get the wrinkles ironed out. No one has ever done a 3rd party or non-x86 mainboard for Frame laptops before.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y agoI agree that it's a good step, it just feels like it would have been a good 2022 step or a good $50 step at the end of 2024, but it just seems like too little too late to be worth the price.
- nrp 2y agoNote that this is a business-focused pre-release from DeepComputing, not the pricing for general developers at release of the Mainboard.
- v1ne 2y agoThis JH7110 is from 2021. Some specs: https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/08/29/starfive-jh7110-risc-v-processor-specifications/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/08/29/starfive-jh7110-risc... 1.5 GHz CPU core frequency, some old RISC-V cores while we're still waiting for cores with decent single-core performance to compete with modern desktop processors. Sorry, but for me this board is dead in the water, unless you can't use ARM/x86 for political reasons.
- 0x457 2y agoIt's a dev board. Reason to buy it: you need a desktop that has RISC-V cpu inside.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y agoThe problem is that it's a dev board that will likely be slower than QEMU, and is missing half of the Risc-V extensions that you want to test with. (and it supports a maximum of 8gb of ram, so good luck compiling LLVM on it)
- snvzz 2y ago>good luck compiling LLVM on it 4 cores, thus 2GB/core. Plenty.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoI regularly get OOMs at 16 GB/core doing debug builds. LLVM is practically a memory stress test.
- 0x457 2y agoOnly if you use FatLTO. I've compiled LLVM many times with less memory. GCC on the other hand is another story. On a machine that I was able to compiled LLVM (thanks swap), I couldn't even extract GCC source code.
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- ralmidani 2y agoHow mature is the RISC-V ecosystem for dev machines? VS Code and Jetbrains IDEs are probably not supported, but what about a setup with Fedora, Erlang, Elixir, Node, and maybe NeoVIM?
- snvzz 2y agoOnce you exclude proprietary (jetbrains) or not-really-open (vs code) tools, it is a non-issue.
- jksmith 2y agohttps://wiki.freepascal.org/Platform_list#Supported_targets_for_RISC-V https://wiki.freepascal.org/Platform_list#Supported_targets_... So with FPC/Lazarus you have a full dev system if works as wiki suggests.
- IshKebab 2y agoThere isn't really any RISC-V hardware that is fast enough that you'd want to run those big IDEs yet.
- camel-cdr 2y agoother thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126976
- autoexecbat 2y agoI really wish these CPUs had the Vector extension
- brucehoult 2y agoSo do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the CPUs that are given us. These CPU cores were announced three years before the Vector extension spec was ready. Check the updates coming next year.
- snvzz 2y agoI am happy that there is already a RVA22+RVV1.0 spacemiT K1/M1 as in milk-v jupiter and banana pi bpi-f3. Relative to having nothing. In 2025, more options will definitely pop up.
- MostlyStable 2y agoA lot of comments are focusing on the value as a RISC-V development platform, which is obviously important, but I'm also hopeful that this presages more Framework mainboard options besides just what Framework itself offers. There is already a pretty big community offering I/O modules beyond Framework's options, but the true benefit of a Framework system is in the ability to not be locked in to only what one company things is worth the time and effort to develop. This is the first inkling that that benefit might actually come about.
- MindSpunk 2y agoThere's not really a lot of room for anyone to make a board that isn't a curiosity or highly-specific developer platform though. Framework already have both x86 vendors covered for people who want Intel or AMD. The only other chip worth making a board for is Snapdragon X Elite. There's nothing else in the same performance class.
- boredatoms 2y agoI hope it becomes a standard format for developer boards
- bane 2y agoThere's the possibility of making mainboards with other features though, built-in FPGAs, SDRs, or maybe lower-powered x86 chips for more battery life. I guess that all falls under "curiosity", but I really do hope that the ecosystem for framework compatible parts blow up.
- omeid2 2y agolower-powered x86 has little chance anymore. In 10 years from now, just about every portable system will be ARM-like.
- timschmidt 2y agoPerformance per watt is nearly identical for the Apple M4 and the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, despite the Ryzen being manufactured on 4nm while the M4 is on 3nm: https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m4-intel-amd-linux/3 https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m4-intel-amd-linux/3 Sorry to burst your bubble.
- usr1106 2y agoThey promise Linux support. What is the situation with Rust on RISC-V? Obviously for a couple of years you haven't been able to build a somewhat complete and modern distro without a Rust compiler. However, that wasn't available everywhere outside of x86 and arm64 at the same time (https://lwn.net/Articles/845535/ https://lwn.net/Articles/845535/). Has that been fully solved in the meantime?
- kldx 2y agoIn the embedded space, rust works great for riscv on ESP chips
- aarroyoc 2y agoThe Rust compiler has supported RISC-V64GC for many years already. I got my first RISC-V SBC in 2022 and have not found a single issue with the Rust compiler (some libraries have problems, but that's a different problem). In the end, the Rust compiler relies on LLVM, which also Clang users need it in order to compile C and C++ programs to RISC-V.
- capitol_ 2y agoMy experience with our riscv build deamons in Debian is everything works, but there is some spurious segfaults from time to time. Check the green build matrix on this page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=alexander.kjall%40gmail.com&comaint=yes https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=alexander.kjall%40...
- snvzz 2y agoIt is kind of amazing where the build process is[0][1]. 0. https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=riscv64&suite=sid https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=riscv64&... 1. https://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph-week-big.png https://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph-week-big.png
- SushiHippie 2y agoAnyone familiar with debian can explain what these drops in percentages are? E.g. arm64 dropped very low for a while or all arches dropped around 2024.68 https://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph-quarter.png https://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph-quarter.png
- sylware 2y agoWell, I need a mini server, like rpi3, ofc I will go for RISC-V (without arm, and if possible without hdmi/hardware mpeg codecs), but they are very hard to buy without big tech browsers. I may write my own mini kernel... for my mini servers.
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