This is interesting, but it'll have a JH7110 and microsd for storage, so it's basically just a RISC-V SBC but in a Framework mainboard form-factor. SBCs with that specific processor seem to be pretty cheap, like the Milk-V Mars which is selling for around $40 currently.
The idea of a RISC-V laptop sounds cool, but this feels like just grabbing a raspberry pi and sticking it in a laptop chasis. It doesn't seem like this is going to really offer anything new in this space other than maybe some increased visibility for RISC-V (esp. if Linus Tech Tips covers it), and a neat project/option for people with existing Framework parts.
As far as development purposes, I don't see what this offers over an existing SBC or even just a VM. From what I've seen of people running Linux on these things, it is definitely not something you'd want to develop on... plus, it seems like DeepCompute sells their own RISC-V laptops which are (probably) more powerful than this thing: https://store.deepcomputing.io/products/dc-roma-riscv-laptop...
> it's basically just a RISC-V SBC but in a Framework mainboard form-factor.
As someone who's been looking for an excuse to get a Framework, I'm thrilled at the idea that if this doesn't pan out, I can just swap in a different mainboard and convert it to a full-featured x86 laptop, and then donate the RISC-V mainboard to the tinkerers at my local hackerspace (who are more than capable of 3D-printing a nice enclosure for it).
Going from a regular Framework mainboard with x86 to this RISC-V will be quite the drop in performance. It's really huge. You don't need to guess.
They didn't say anything about performance though?
Which says everything that needs to be said
I meant kibwen didn't say anything about performance, not the OP.
They also didn't say anything about the mainboard having RGB LEDs or a quantum computing chip, but I'm assuming someone swapping a x86 mainboard for a RISC-V one on a personal laptop will want some kind of performance for daily tasks, which that chip won't provide even barely.
Why not assume that someone interested in a RISC-V laptop understands the limitations associated with RISC-V? Just seems like hating for no reason :\
And also understands JH7110 was already available in VisionFive 2 in early 2022, and is neither new nor representative of current RISC-V compliant microarchitectures.
Who's hating? Please stop projecting your own insecurities.
Or... Maybe people who buy these things know why they're buying them and raw horsepower isn't their primary concern.
My testing put the performance a bit shy of an A72 @ 2.4GHz. The U54 was on par with an A53.
I thought I saw someone else publish specmarks to corroborate this assertion, but i can't find it right now.
Modern Arm chips will maintain a wide gap in performance for quite awhile.* Arm has poured a lot of money into optimizing their chip IP and it speaks for itself in the benchmarks. Excluding if performance wasn't a concern to begin with - I don't see the argument why an open ISA is really worth the performance / heat / power cost.
*: https://www.phoronix.com/review/visionfive2-riscv-benchmarks
I hope you realize that you're talking about a cheap SoC that was released in late 2022, and does not reflect currently announced RISC-V microarchitectures.
e.g. SiFive P870 is competitive with ARM's best, whereas Ventana Veyron V2 and Tenstorrent Ascalon/Alastor compete with the state of the art from AMD/Intel/Apple/Qualcomm.
RISC-V enables the best processors.
I must have missed the real world performance benchmarks that demonstrate the claims of a marketing department.
It's a chip that you could buy over 2 years ago. It's a JH7110 SoC which you can buy for like $40 in one of several SBC:
https://www.starfivetech.com/en/site/boards
https://pine64.com/product-category/star64/
https://milkv.io/mars
I happen to have 2 of them and they're dog slow, pre-vector extension RISC-V. You cannot do much useful with them, they're slower than a Raspberry Pi 3.
I meant kibwen, not the OP.
It's intended for hobbyists and tinkerers. If you want a computer that screams, you get a desktop. Nobody's trying to play the newest GTA on this chip.
StarFive catalog parts use slightly tweaked SiFive cores. So if you were going to license a SiFive core for an embedded design, you may want to have something that uses the catalog part to verify your code will work.
I mean, emulating your core for development is a good approach in general, but at some point you may want to run your code on actual silicon.
So sure, an Intel i9 or ARM Mac is probably going to be faster than a 4 core U74 SoC, but if you're using a RISC-V core for some embedded application, having a RISC-V system to test with is probably a good idea.
And it's cool you can get a RISC-V SBC for a couple hundred bux. It wasn't too long ago that you paid $2k for a 4 core U54 SoC with minimal peripherals. And if you can stuff it in a laptop form factor, it's portable.
They are planning to do it the other way round so no worries, I guess.
You don't even need to 3D print anything, just get the official mainboard enclosure https://frame.work/ca/en/products/cooler-master-mainboard-ca...
What if, with the space you have for the motherboard, you add not one SoC but, say, seven, all connected through an in-PCB network. One has the external ports while all others are headless. A small cluster in the shape of a laptop.
This would be super cool. I don’t know if it would have any actual use in industry. But it would be really neat for people learning MPI/cluster computing. He said, while waiting for a run to go through SLURM.
I've been thinking of doing something with Octavo parts, because my electronic design skills are totally obsolete now and they are simple to integrate. My idea is a board with 16 parts (for 32 cores) with red LEDs lining up one side mimicking a Thinking Machines CM-1 cube. Not a CM-1, but a lot of nodes if you join 16 boards per cube.
Are they selling a service of, like, building a multi-chip package where you pick the chiplets? That seems crazy futuristic.
No. They sell bundled parts where they integrate SoC, memory and passives so that you can just connect power lines, an SD card, and start running it.
Putting that many nontrivial SoCs into a laptop-sized chassis isn't really possible - just look at how busy this single-SoC motherboard already is[0].
It would make far more sense to go the traditional Raspberry Pi cluster way, either as discrete nodes[1], daughterboards[2], or as blades[3].
[0]: https://deepcomputing.io/a-risc-v-world-first-independently-...
[1]: https://www.raspberrypi.com/tutorials/cluster-raspberry-pi-t...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecdm3oA-QdQ, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6zt8KeXFdA
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKDGlpnP-vE
I was thinking more like this [0] or [1] but laptop.
[0] https://deskpi.com/products/deskpi-super6c-raspberry-pi-cm4-...
[1] https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Clusterboard
"From what I've seen of people running Linux on these things, it is definitely not something you'd want to develop on"
Can you please elaborate? I'm a programmer with a linux framework laptop (NixOS specifically).
It's slow to the point of being outpaced by an ARM SBC from 2016, and it's not even current with today's RISC-V spec. This is a curiosity, nothing more, but it will still be far and away the nicest (but not the only!) RISC-V laptop. Give me a Pi CM5 + 16GB RAM Framework motherboard carrier and I'll get out my credit card.
Benchmarks of the CPU in question: https://www.phoronix.com/review/visionfive2-riscv-benchmarks...
There are better options[0] already announced for RISC-V laptops.
The chip there (spacemiT K1) is available in Banana Pi BPi-F3, which is already shipping. It is RVA22 with the ratified V extension.
A laptop with JH7110 makes little sense today.
0. https://linuxgizmos.com/musebook-riscv-v-laptop-with-spacemi...
The JH7110 is a multi-year-old SBC that is slower than a Raspberry Pi 3 is. It does not have many extensions for things people today take for granted (no hardware crypto for instance is in practice a massive loss.) So, if you're OK with that, then it will be fine. But most people probably aren't interested in making their expensive laptop perform worse than a 15-year-old device in every way.
OT, but does something like that exist for the Pi 5? I actually loved the Pi 400 Desktop Kit (I hope they make one for the Pi 5!), and I saw quite a few laptop shells for the Pi 4, but I've not seen anything announced for the Pi 5 except for various ridiculous "desktop" cases (like the Pironman 5 that I've actually ordered).
When the CM5 module comes out, your problems will be solved.
Good point, the form factor of the regular isn't suited. But I do hope that someone will actually make a laptop shell for it.
Yeah. spacemiT K1 is a new chip, 8core, RVA22 with Vector extension.
JH7110 is old in contrast. Was first seen in VisionFive 2 in January 2023. Only 4 cores, slower, and RVA20 without Vector.
I think visibility is probably the primary goal which is not a bad thing.
As for actual use the potential lies in the modularity. You could work primarily from an x86 laptop but swap the RISK-V board in for testing. And whichever board isn't currently in the laptop can be even be loaded into the small desktop shell Framework makes. If the price is right an existing Framework user could possibly get a RISC-V machine for less money than one of the dedicated laptops from DeepCompute without needing to buy another screen, keyboard, battery, etc and end up with a better build quality to boot.
Or was, apparently? Seems to be out of stock and there's no restock or backorder date shown.