DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

https://deepcomputing.io/deepcomputing-launches-early-access-program-for-dc-roma-risc-v-mainboard-for-framework-laptop-13/

by sohkamyung • 2 years ago

150 67 2 years ago

deepcomputing.io

luyu_wu• 2 years ago

Took 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)...

adgjlsfhk15• 2 years ago

the 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for the extensions that the ecosystem is going to require it's hard to justify 200 for ~pi3 performance on an already outdated platform

brucehoult9• 2 years ago

The 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.

nrp2• 2 years ago

Note that this is a business-focused pre-release from DeepComputing, not the pricing for general developers at release of the Mainboard.

v1ne2• 2 years ago

This JH7110 is from 2021. Some specs: 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.

0x4572• 2 years ago

It's a dev board. Reason to buy it: you need a desktop that has RISC-V cpu inside.

adgjlsfhk15• 2 years ago

The 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)

rjsw• 2 years ago

If you want a desktop, the Pine64 Star64 is only $90 for the same spec. This is a laptop though.

brucehoult9• 2 years ago

This JH7110 is from 2021.

First retail customer deliveries of mass-production JH7110 chip and board were February 2023. First laptops with it were at the end of 2023.

The CPU cores used (U74) were announced in October 2018. The first high-priced dev boards using essentially test chips (HiFive Unmatched $650, BeagleV Starlight unknown price, 300 were made and given away to developers) were mid 2021.

It is important to distinguish the dates of availability of RTL for a core, first tests chips of a complete SoC using it, and mass-production as there is usually several years between each stage.

You hear about all these dates in the RISC-V and Arm worlds where each thing (core, SoC, board) is done by different companies, each with a vendor-customer relationship with the previous stage company. You don't hear about them in the more vertically-integrated x86 and Apple worlds.

therealcamino• 2 years ago

That's true, you don't hear about these dates in vertically-integrated businesses, but it's a bit of a misdirection. Vertically-integrated manufacturers definitely don't take 6 years from RTL completion to mass production of the end product.

ralmidani• 2 years ago

How 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?

snvzz5• 2 years ago

Once you exclude proprietary (jetbrains) or not-really-open (vs code) tools, it is a non-issue.

jksmith• 2 years ago

https://wiki.freepascal.org/Platform_list#Supported_targets_...

So with FPC/Lazarus you have a full dev system if works as wiki suggests.

IshKebab• 2 years ago

There isn't really any RISC-V hardware that is fast enough that you'd want to run those big IDEs yet.

camel-cdr• 2 years ago

other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42126976

autoexecbat• 2 years ago

I really wish these CPUs had the Vector extension

brucehoult9• 2 years ago

So 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.

snvzz5• 2 years ago

I 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• 2 years ago

A 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• 2 years ago

There'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• 2 years ago

I hope it becomes a standard format for developer boards

bane• 2 years ago

There'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.

beeflet• 2 years ago

that isn't a curiosity or highly-specific developer platform though

So what? It would be great to use this as a developer platform because you have the whole chassis and peripherals of a laptop and all you have to make is the mainboard

bitwize• 2 years ago

Oh, come on.

You just know someone's gonna make an Amiga one.

And a whole bunch of aging German and Scandinavian hackers are gonna come out and try to convince people, no seriously, this is a great daily driver, you just have to go to Aminet and get the right RTG driver pack for the display panel and...

ShirleyMarquez3• 2 years ago

Yet. There will be competition for the Snapdragon series. At least if Arm doesn't shot itself in the foot with lawsuits; if they do, the real action will shift to RISC-V. I'm sure that the Nuvia developers are already working on a RISC-V chip just in case...

nrp2• 2 years ago

We have gotten inbound interest from other Mainboard makers too, at least one of which is pretty far along on a design.

whazor• 2 years ago

Would you be okay if they compete with your mainboards? For example, they produce a lower price AMD board.

tholm• 2 years ago

That's awesome to hear! I'm really excited to see the framework ecosystem grow.

m463• 2 years ago

This is basically similar to what made the IBM PC successful. They opened up the bus architecture, and the market for add-in cards exploded.

(being IBM, they later tried to "upgrade" to a locked-down microchannel bus, but it happily didn't go anywhere)

other things got standardized (motherboards, power supplies, peripherals, etc) and it has been going ~ 40 years now.

trhway• 2 years ago

They opened up the bus architecture, the market for add-in cards exploded.

Price and size and overall state of tech back then didn't really allow to have several PCs in one (for some rare and pricey exceptions like PowerPC CPU extension boards, etc.). These days we can potentially have inside regular size laptop a backboard with standard bus (something like Sipeed cluster board which takes up to 7 credit card sized SoCs [1]) into which we can potentially plug various SoCs of the same or different arc. Say one SoC is RISC-V, one x86 and several SoCs with powerful NPUs - configure your laptop(cluster) for the mission at hand. Dare i say from a common bin of parts in the office (or even from public library - the SoCs are just tens of dollars nowdays, like say a game cartridge).

[1] one can imagine if the cards were inserted at angle instead of vertically https://www.amazon.com/Sipeed-Lichee-Cluster-High-Performanc...

usr1106• 2 years ago

They 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/). Has that been fully solved in the meantime?

kldx• 2 years ago

In the embedded space, rust works great for riscv on ESP chips

aarroyoc• 2 years ago

The 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_• 2 years ago

My 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%40...

snvzz5• 2 years ago

It is kind of amazing where the build process is[0][1].

0. https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=riscv64&...

1. https://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph-week-big.png

sylware• 2 years ago

Well, 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.

DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

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