How usable is this? I don’t know much about RISC-V. But when I DL software I only ever see X64 and ARM options.
Well, the second sentence of the linked post is:
This is very much a developer-focused board to help accelerate maturing the software ecosystem around RISC-V, so we recommend waiting for future RISC-V products if you’re looking for a consumer-ready experience.
So I’m gonna go with not very.
Right now, not very. Basically only open source software can run on it, and only if it’s either exceptionally portable or has been tweaked to compile for it.
In the future, hopefully this is usable for general computing, but right now it’s basically only usable for R&D or niche applications.
The path forward for RISC-V is getting it into more developers’ hands though, so having it available for really nice hardware like the Framework is awesome.
Around the Raspberry 5 or lower level from what I read. More for developers than for practical use, but then again, I don’t have real world experience with it.
Probably even worse than that.
https://www.phoronix.com/review/visionfive2-riscv-benchmarks/2
This has less RAM, but it’s the same CPU. You can see it’s consistently 3 to 4 times slower than a Raspberry Pi 4! They are not joking about this not being for general use.
A Dev board like this is pretty cool, though. It could help pave the way to a performant board later.
I really do want to see risc V succeed in the desk top and laptop space. The fact that there are only two major architectures and both are owned by companies is a serious potential issue. Especially if they both ended up being owned by one company somehow.
Well, kind of 3 companies.
Intel and AMD both have rights to x86_64, since they both held patents used by it. In 2021, AMD’s patents expired.
Then there’s ARM, which is solely owned by Arm Holdings.
But yes, it’s still very much a big problem, and I really hope RISC-V succeeds to solve that problem. Licensing core designs is a much better motive and business model than licensing an entire ISA.
Edit: oh wait, you said two architectures, not two companies. Never mind, you’re right. :)
RISCy click of the day
They also sell bare chassis, if you need something to put it in.
