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Linux Hardware Technology

SiFive Unveils Plan For Linux PCs With RISC-V Processors (venturebeat.com) 42

Posted by BeauHD from the royalty-free dept.
SiFive today announced it is creating a platform for Linux-based personal computers based on RISC-V processors. VentureBeat reports: Assuming customers adopt the processors and use them in PCs, the move might be part of a plan to create Linux-based PCs that use royalty-free processors. This could be seen as a challenge to computers based on designs from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Apple, or Arm, but giants of the industry don't have to cower just yet. The San Mateo, California-based company unveiled HiFive Unmatched, a development design for a Linux-based PC that uses its RISC-V processors. At the moment, these development PCs are early alternatives, most likely targeted at hobbyists and engineers who may snap them up when they become available in the fourth quarter for $665.

The SiFive HiFive Unmatched board will have a SiFive processor, dubbed the SiFive FU740 SoC, a 5-core processor with four SiFive U74 cores and one SiFive S7 core. The U-series cores are Linux-based 64-bit application processor cores based on RISC-V. These cores can be mixed and matched with other SiFive cores, such as the SiFive FU740. These components are all leveraging SiFive's existing intellectual property portfolio. The HiFive Unmatched board comes in the mini-ITX standard form factor to make it easy to build a RISC-V PC. SiFive also added some standard industry connectors -- ATX power supplies, PCI-Express expansion, Gigabit Ethernet, and USB ports are present on a single-board RISC-V development system.

The HiFive Unmatched board includes 8GB of DDR4 memory, 32MB of QSPI flash memory, and a microSD card slot on the motherboard. For debugging and monitoring, developers can access the console output of the board through the built-in microUSB type-B connector. Developers can expand it using PCI-Express slots, including both a PCIe general-purpose slot (PCIe Gen 3 x8) for graphics, FPGAs, or other accelerators and M.2 slots for NVME storage (PCIe Gen 3 x4) and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth modules (PCIe Gen 3 x1). There are four USB 3.2 Gen 1 type-A ports on the rear, next to the Gigabit Ethernet port, making it easy to connect peripherals. The system will ship with a bootable SD card that includes Linux and popular system developer packages, with updates available for download from SiFive.com. It will be available for preorders soon.
For some more context: Could RISC-V processors compete with Intel, ARM, and AMD?
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SiFive Unveils Plan For Linux PCs With RISC-V Processors More

SiFive Unveils Plan For Linux PCs With RISC-V Processors

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  • Royalty-Free processors (Score:5, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Monday November 02, 2020 @07:59PM (#60678216)

    I am sure Harry and Meghan would approve...

  • Only (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday November 02, 2020 @08:03PM (#60678226)

    Four times the price of a Chromebook and half the speed. Take my money! RISC-V is Betamax in a VHS world.

    • Re:Only (Score:4, Informative)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday November 02, 2020 @08:34PM (#60678310)

      Four times the price of a Chromebook and half the speed. Take my money! RISC-V is Betamax in a VHS world.

      Realizing, of course, that Betamax was actually the superior technology ...

      • Superior in what way? There's a good reason it ended up losing the format war, it's superior picture quality relied on being played back very quickly leading to tapes which only offered short runtimes, too short for feature length movies at a time when VHS had no such problem. BetaII addressed this problem by introducing longer playback times around about the same time that VHS HQ came out offering identical video quality to Betamax so there was no reason to switch technology to Beta.

        The truly superior tech

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Was it though?

        https://youtu.be/_oJs8-I9WtA [youtu.be]

        VHS looks better to me. Beta was popular with production companies because Sony made better production grade hardware with production support features, but quality-wise... It depends more on the particular machine and the tape you are using than the format.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Only (Score:4, Interesting)

      by subreality ( 157447 ) on Monday November 02, 2020 @09:38PM (#60678424)

      You have it entirely backward. Betamax was encumbered by licensing. JVC licensed VHS to anyone who wanted to make it, and it quickly became popular and cheap. The technical performance started lower, but it incrementally improved until it was just as good.

      RISC-V is royalty-free, and Free. It currently doesn't match the performance of ARM, but it's good enough in many places. It's likely to keep improving as it gets adopted.

      This particular product may be a flop, but RISC-V is the VHS in a Betamax world.

      • You have it entirely backward. Betamax was encumbered by licensing. JVC licensed VHS to anyone who wanted to make it, and it quickly became popular and cheap. The technical performance started lower, but it incrementally improved until it was just as good.

        It incrementally improved while Beta did, too. It never caught up.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's likely to keep improving as it gets adopted.

        I hope so. It needs serious money throwing at it to make that happen and it's not clear where that money is going to come from. ARM has licence fees, RISC-V has to rely on companies deciding it's worth investing in.

        With ARM a lot of the development is done centrally. For example they came up with the big.LITTLE architecture for octa-core, mixed high performance and power efficient cores. Because ARM developed it all manufacturers were able to implement it with tested designs and full toolchain support almos

        • With RISC-V the ISA is open source but designers can still charge for their uArch which is what SiFive is doing. The difference here is that if you want to base your designs off of a predesigned core like with ARM you have to pay the designer but if you want to go it your own and just use the ISA you don't have to pay licensing. This gives a solution where large chip designers with their own patent portfolios such as Nvidia can freely use the RSIC-V ISA while incorporating their own tech. If you wanted to d

    • One should not confuse professional tools for Eloi-ready hardware.
      For serious customers the price is a trifle. Those not using them as intended can buy something else.

      • Why exactly is is supposed to be more expensive for beong un-honed and half-finished design?
        Consimer-ready takes a lot of work. So it ahould be more expensive.

        In reality, it is only mass-productiom that makes the latter cheaper.

        So unless you really really need ir, e.g as a pro, it simply still isn't worth that money.
        And even if you are a pro, you still know you are being ripped off. Because they can, and because for you, it is still advantageous. Not thanks to them, though.

    • Risc-V can use Coreboot [coreboot.org] or other open bootloaders and doesn't have the Intel ME or any equivalent. That's a big plus in my book.

      The only other laptops that can have a fully open boot process are old Core2Duo chipsets with Libreboot.

      SiFive admit they're still in early stages but given that the only current open alternative is the IBM Power9 plaform (not exactly laptop-friendly) at least it's moving in a positive direction.

  • can build amd systems for that price with more pci-e io / storage io / ram / cores.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 )

      But not with freedom.
      Of course it is cheape to feed youself, if you agree to be The Gimp in an SM club basement. But you're gonna occasionally have to swallow shit with a dilated asshold.
      If that is your thing ... I don't judge. :P

  • Yeah, FU740! (Score:3)

    by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Monday November 02, 2020 @09:09PM (#60678384)
    I wonder who they are saying FU to?
  • I want to know what a linux based core is.
  • Whoever has the most architectures when he dies wins.

  • Incremental step towards RISC-V general computing (Score:4, Informative)

    by radoni ( 267396 ) on Monday November 02, 2020 @11:46PM (#60678652)

    The SiFive Unmatched includes enough add-on peripheral support so that the software infrastructure can get tooled up on some real hardware. The previous SiFive Unleashed (and corresponding expansion board) offering together were 4x the cost of what this newer board can do. It's not a cash grab by SiFive.

    Keep in mind also that RISC-V has been here for the masses since 2-3 years ago. You have RISC-V cores embedded in various devices in your daily life, it is broadly being used as a general computing replacement for custom purpose-built ASIC cores in all manner of electronics products from hard drives to "smart appliances" to graphics cards and phone NVMe storage controllers. That is the true business of SiFive is to drive adoption of their intellectual property. Offering a developer board is standard operating procedure in this business. It would be weird if they didn't.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It will really become interesting for hobbyists when Taiwanese or Chinese manufacturers start pumping out billions of low cost SoCs. When you can buy a Raspberry Pi form factor SBC or a â20 STB.

      I just recently bought that STB. Made an old dumb TV smart. It's got a quad core ARM CPU, GPU is powerful enough to do 4k video, wifi/bluetooth/100M ethernet, 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, LCD display on the front, USB etc. Even came with a remote, HDMI cable and power supply. It's incredible what you can get for next to n

  • Don't say "intellectual property" (Score:5, Informative)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @12:40AM (#60678706)

    It is reality distortion like these (physics themselves make the "ownership" of infomation an impossibility), upon which the organized crime thrives, that causes things like the youtube-dl takedown, people being blocked from repairing their own cars, farmers going to prison for wheat that reproduced on their farm because nature found a way, and artists being abused and innovation and art stifled to the point of institutionalizing endless remakes and rehashes of the same art.

    It is not a copy of information that deserves payment. It is *work*.
    More mone must mean more work! Otherwise I could declare my salary laboratory property, and go shopping with mere copies of that money, claiming "I worked hard for that money!" as if that would make it not theft/fraud/robbery/usury, even if I "worked" to go to the copy shop, and even if I use the shopped goods to work some more.

    Say what it is: An invalid business model from the media distribution days, that de-facto results in theft, kept going with an imaginary artificial scarcity monopoly (Both of these being officially crimes too) and legalized racketeering.

  • RPiV for about the same price RPi4-8GB goes and cooler and faster ....and I'll buy a few. Otherwise...I'll pass.

  • Sounds great, I would love to run haiku-os on it though.

  • Too big to be a little VPN box / DNS server / PiHole that takes up precious little room in your home rack (like a Raspberry Pi), and too underwhelming to be a deskop machine. This one is for the developers only I'd say - hobbyists will look elsewhere.

  • This one is two days old.

    https://slashdot.org/story/20/... [slashdot.org]

    Typical slashdolt fail

    It's a good thing nobody is paying for this shit any more, or calling these dumbfucks "editors" would be fraud

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