A RISC-V CPU for $8

https://hackaday.com/2019/02/14/new-part-day-a-risc-v-cpu-for-eight-dollars/

by heywire • 7 years ago

230 62 7 years ago

Sold out already. :- )

I want to see what Espressif, SiPeed, or some other vendor manages to do with RISC-V. I'm currently prototyping an A2DP vendor codec extension for Opus using an ESP32 board, and it is pretty painless. Bluetooth is the high value bit in my opinion.

ac292• 7 years ago

The module without WiFi is in Stock (and is the $8 model, the WiFi is $9).

https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-MAIX-I-module-w-o-WiFi-1s...

There's also a dev board, which is probably much more useful than these bare modules. Unfortunately also out of stock: https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-MAix-BiT-for-RISC-V-AI-Io...

agumonkey3• 7 years ago

13$ for a rpi zero w like thing.. not bad

mrmondo4• 7 years ago

Ah I’ve had really good experiences with SeeedStudio too, ordered plenty of things over the years - dangerous site for me to visit when I have money ;,)

dklsafhjskljfl• 7 years ago

I view wifi on these devices as an anti-feature. Too often, they rely on MVP web services with limited security, and require a full TCP/IP stack, alongside CA-based PKI (meaning, an inherently limited lifespan).

Not against a limited lifespan, but I really do like the model of a bridge device that communicates over wire or bluetooth, especially for consumer IOT - bt-based standards prevent vendor lock-in, for example.

brucehoult• 7 years ago

Yeah, Espressif joined the RISC-V foundation, so it will be interesting to see if there is an ESP32 with RISC-V instead of Xtensa sometime soon.

microcolonel2• 7 years ago

Maybe an RV64GC[V maybe] ESP64, with a bit more RAM. :- )

Roark66• 7 years ago

What a joke of a "release" why are all such products almost immediately out of stock. Do they make 20 units? They don't even bother to say on their website when if ever they'll have more units available.

Imagine if you worked months to develop a product based on this chip and after all this work you can't use it because it is out of stock with no further info. This is why it'll make no sense to use such chips until they can be bought at digikey, mouser etc in serious quantities.

ruffrey• 7 years ago

Anyone know what "neural network processor" means, with regard to this chip?

wyldfire• 7 years ago

Sometimes it's a DSP or FPGA with blocks/instructions designed to implement common matrix transformations.

In this particular case a vendor on that site claims:

3. There are 5.9MB SRAM can be used for convolutional neural network acceleration, so, it is possible to run small model like tiny-yolo v2,MobileNet, as you see in face detection routine video.

monocasa2• 7 years ago

It's a not very well documented "Neural Network Processor (KPU)"

https://github.com/kendryte/kendryte-doc-datasheet/blob/mast...

ac292• 7 years ago

There's a port of MicroPython to these chips, which is nice: https://github.com/sipeed/MaixPy

matt_trentini• 7 years ago

It's also attracting a lot of attention in the MicroPython community; seems like this port will improve rapidly.

purplezooey• 7 years ago

very nice

sandov• 7 years ago

Off-topic: I'm so freaking excited for RISC-V.

Koshkin• 7 years ago

The runner-up: https://www.analoglamb.com/product/dual-core-risc-v-64bit-k2...

monocasa2• 7 years ago

Same chip, different board.

netrap• 7 years ago

What is the big difference between ARM RISC chips and RISC-V?

mereel• 7 years ago

RISC-V is an open ISA created by these guys: https://riscv.org/. ARM RISC chips are ARM IP and not open. There's a lot more to unpack there, but that's the gist of it.

iagovar• 7 years ago

Will we see general purpose risc v's? I mean, as a substitute for ARM for example

mrmondo4• 7 years ago

Here’s the Aliexpress link to buy the package with wifi, LCD and camera, it’s about 40% more expensive than "taobao.com" if you’re not a Chinese citizen with ID but still cheap as: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/LEORY-Sipeed-M1-Dock-Develop...

luma• 7 years ago

Careful - that's just the dev board without the M1 MCU itself. Taobao is pretty easy to access through the use of reshippers, I've used superbuy.com with much success but there are loads of options out there to pick up deals from Taobao and have them sent out of mainland China.

theli0nheart2• 7 years ago

I've used superbuy.com with much success but there are loads of options out there to pick up deals from Taobao and have them sent out of mainland China.

Please do tell more! I just made a Superbuy account but can't for the life of me figure out how to use it.

I'm somewhat fluent in Mandarin (my reading's a little rusty), so if that opens up additional options I'd love to know of them.

mrmondo4• 7 years ago

Oh so it is - also available here: https://www.yoycart.com/Product/578484113485/

potatofarmer45• 7 years ago

This is super exciting. I hope the demand for these stimulates the copycat manufacturers into making even more RISC-V chips at lower and lower prices with better availability and options (aka, Arduino style).

glhaynes• 7 years ago

From the RISC-V Privileged ISA Specification [https://riscv.org/specifications/privileged-isa/]:

We briefly note that the entire privileged-level design described in this document could be replaced with an entirely different privileged-level design without changing the user-level ISA, and possibly without even changing the ABI. In particular, this privileged specification was designed to run existing popular operating systems, and so embodies the conventional level-based protection model. Alternate privileged specifications could embody other more flexible protection-domain models.

Do many/most other architectures have this attribute? The idea of replacing only one "side" of an architecture has never crossed my mind before and seems pretty cool.

FullyFunctional2• 7 years ago

To my knowledge, no other _widely deployed_ ISA has had this level of flexibility and foresight. In fact it's usually the opposite; the ISA is usually tightly coupled to the processor implementation that introduced it and the survival (= market success) of the immediate product is all that matters. However if it's successful, the successor(s) are now locked into support all the legacy of its predecessors.

I can only think of two other examples that successfully planned for the future: the IBM 360 (extremely CISC, but still alive today) and the DEC Alpha (beautiful design, but now mostly dead).

gmueckl• 7 years ago

The Alpha disappeared because DEC went under and HP buried the CPU in favor of the Itanium, which is now also dead (mostly because of its technical shortcomings).

FullyFunctional2• 7 years ago

This has come up so many times. It has far too little memory for Linux, but ignoring that, the MMU is broken and can't support virtual memory (not that they claim to support supervisor mode anywhere).

desdiv• 7 years ago

Kendryte K210 is designed for FreeRTOS[0] and other embedded OSes.

Complaining that it doesn't support Linux is like complaining that a Honda Civic can't compete in Formula One.

[0] https://github.com/kendryte/kendryte-freertos-sdk

trhway• 7 years ago

in 1995 the Linux (Slackware) was flying on 25MHz 386SX with 4M RAM :)

sharpneli• 7 years ago

There are various slimmed down versions of Linux. The kernel itself can be squeezed down into rather small footprint.

It's the lack of full MMU that's the actual reason, it keeps the chip firmly in the microcontroller domain.

andrewstuart• 7 years ago

I'd be happy if it ran FreeRTOS. 8MB sounds like a whole lot of memory to me ... currently working with less than 512K on the esp32.

jimmies• 7 years ago

I have a LOLIN32 with 4MB RAM, it is a dream.

PinguTS• 7 years ago

It is not designed as a general purpose microchip. It is designed as a microcontroller type microchip.

Memory is expansive, because Si chip area is expansive. The chip is designed for cheap special purpose applications. For that it fulfills the function.

Btw. you can run Linux on it, you just need to do something and can't simply put the latest and greatest Ubuntu distribution on it.

nerdponx• 7 years ago

Is there any chance this will supplant AVR for hobbyist uses?

steve19• 7 years ago

I think AVR had already been supplanted by ARM and ESP

childintime2• 7 years ago

As a dark pattern, the chip seems purpose-built for spying. It is interesting as we're witnessing the birth of a new category of embedded chips. 1. I wonder if a chip with these features will be standard in a couple of years, and somewhat shake up the embedded world. 2. ARM was said to be bet heavily on AI, but this chip seems to be ahead. Correct?

SmellyGeekBoy2• 7 years ago

I'm not sure I follow... What specifically about this chip makes it purpose-built for spying?

childintime2• 7 years ago

It is a chip that puts face-recognition (and sound-recognition) in a webcam almost for free, and it lowers the price of this capability dramatically. This lends itself to tracking people in public and commercial places, on a scale not yet seen. Maybe it even is the initial market? Regardless it represents an interesting new kind of device (which ARM was aiming for)!

A RISC-V CPU for $8

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