4 ms·

Can't beat that price, just be warned that it's slower than a Pi 3, probably similar to a Pi 2.

by deivid 1y ago

brucehoult 1y ago
It is not! That is super misleading. For normal program code it is closer to a Pi 4 than to a Pi 3, similar to the all the very popular A55s board that have come out more recently than the Pi 4. The only way it is slower than a Pi 3 is if the Pi 3 program is using SIMD (Neon), which the VisionFive 2 lacks. The worst part of this Pi 3 comparison is that the Pi 3 has only 512MB or 1GB of RAM, which is extremely limiting in the modern world. This RISC-V board comes with a *minimum* of 2GB and is available with 8GB for $37. The RAM difference alone makes many things possible that are impossible on a Pi 3, and many other things much faster, regardless of the raw CPU speed. And then you have the M.2 NVMe SSD, something that neither the Pi 3 nor Pi 4 support, which again makes a whole raft of things much faster, even if the single lane means it can "only" do something near 400 MB/s (vs SD cards at 40 or 80 MB/s)
- deivid 1y ago
  Maybe the memory of my Pi2 is better than reality. I have a VisionFive2 as part of my lab (next to some arm and x86 sbc), with an nvme disk, and it's unbearably slow. It's still useful for testing platform compatibility, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
  - brucehoult 1y ago
    I certainly wouldn't recommend ANY current RISC-V board as your full time desktop machine for doing everything. Or any Raspberry Pi either. The Orion O6 and the newest Qualcomm stuff is a different matter, and RISC-V will be joining that league next year. But not right now. If you're short on money you can pick up full working systems with Core 2 Duo or early i3/i5/i7 CPUs and proper cases and power supplies and hard disks and monitors and keyboards and mice etc for the same price as a bare SBC -- or even for free. Things no longer supported by Windows or MacOS (and you can't install current versions of software on the old OS versions they do run) run Linux with the latest apps just fine. ANY Intel Mac ever made (right back to 2005) is better than a Pi 5 and you can just slap an Ubuntu installer on a USB stick and install it and everything Just Works. For those who for whatever reason specifically want to use RISC-V software, a VisionFive 2 is faster on a per-core basis than Qemu on a PC -- and a lot cheaper and more power efficient unless that PC already exists and is otherwise not doing anything.

Can't beat that price, just be warned that it's slower than a Pi 3, probably similar to a Pi 2.

by deivid 1y ago

Can't beat that price, just be warned that it's slower than a Pi 3, probably similar to a Pi 2.

It is not! That is super misleading. For normal program code it is closer to a Pi 4 than to a Pi 3, similar to the all the very popular A55s board that have come out more recently than the Pi 4. The only way it is slower than a Pi 3 is if the Pi 3 program is using SIMD (Neon), which the VisionFive 2 lacks. The worst part of this Pi 3 comparison is that the Pi 3 has only 512MB or 1GB of RAM, which is extremely limiting in the modern world. This RISC-V board comes with a *minimum* of 2GB and is available with 8GB for $37. The RAM difference alone makes many things possible that are impossible on a Pi 3, and many other things much faster, regardless of the raw CPU speed. And then you have the M.2 NVMe SSD, something that neither the Pi 3 nor Pi 4 support, which again makes a whole raft of things much faster, even if the single lane means it can "only" do something near 400 MB/s (vs SD cards at 40 or 80 MB/s)

deivid 1y ago
Maybe the memory of my Pi2 is better than reality. I have a VisionFive2 as part of my lab (next to some arm and x86 sbc), with an nvme disk, and it's unbearably slow. It's still useful for testing platform compatibility, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
- brucehoult 1y ago
  I certainly wouldn't recommend ANY current RISC-V board as your full time desktop machine for doing everything. Or any Raspberry Pi either. The Orion O6 and the newest Qualcomm stuff is a different matter, and RISC-V will be joining that league next year. But not right now. If you're short on money you can pick up full working systems with Core 2 Duo or early i3/i5/i7 CPUs and proper cases and power supplies and hard disks and monitors and keyboards and mice etc for the same price as a bare SBC -- or even for free. Things no longer supported by Windows or MacOS (and you can't install current versions of software on the old OS versions they do run) run Linux with the latest apps just fine. ANY Intel Mac ever made (right back to 2005) is better than a Pi 5 and you can just slap an Ubuntu installer on a USB stick and install it and everything Just Works. For those who for whatever reason specifically want to use RISC-V software, a VisionFive 2 is faster on a per-core basis than Qemu on a PC -- and a lot cheaper and more power efficient unless that PC already exists and is otherwise not doing anything.