MIPS Claims "Best-In-Class Performance" With New RISC-V eVocore CPUs

[igxqrrl]

Is $16.90 good enough for you for a "compute module" kind of board (different connector than Pi)?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003594875290.html

Or $20.90 bundled with a $5 expansion board, $23.90 with WIFI:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003741287162.html

Or $29 for one with the same SoC but on a Pi CM3 compatible board:

https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/copy-of-clockworkpi-core-r-01

This SoC is roughly Pi Zero class. Runs Linux, with 512 MB or 1 GB RAM depending on exactly which of the above boards you get. Not fast but you said that's OK.

These kinda prove my point.

IMO these are SBC and Linux compatible in name only. Your average CS student, or average hobbyist, is not going to be able to use these. Forums abound with people spending hours or days trying to get Linux running.

There are companies (e.g. SiFive) who have the resources that they could help streamline this process. But aside from the long-delayed Risc-V hand thingy, they too haven't had much interest in this market.

Before Raspberry pi there were arm boards that could run Linux for hobbyists, but not until the rpi foundation did the product get traction. Why? Because they had a stable linux installation, a robust and easy installation process, and a product where, for $25 (or whatever), you could have a usable ARM SOC. None of the items above seem to fit that bill.

[splitcells.net]

RISC-V desperately needs a sub-$100 SBC that can capture some mind-share. It needn't be fast, but it needs to run Linux. The hobbyist market right now is completely ceded to the Raspberry Pi.

There is something very close to that at least: sub-$200:

https://shop.allnetchina.cn/collections/starfive/products/starfive-visionfive-ai-single-board-computer

[splitcells.net]

PS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PoWAsBOsFs

[igxqrrl]

There is something very close to that at least: sub-$200:
https://shop.allnetchina.cn/collecti...board-computer

Thanks! This is the right direction. As an old fogie, it's in impulse purchase territory for me. Probably a little pricey for many, and of course the price precludes the usual "Hey, I'll use this for a k8 cluster!" crowd, but this is the closest I've seen. Thanks for the pointer!

[bachchain]

MIPS hardware, now MIPS-free!

[artivision]

It says 8 fetch, so possibly 8 decode too. Generally you have 1.5-2x as many execution ports than decoders. But width doesn't say much about performance.

There are some very odd design choices here: there is a shared L2 cache and SMT, but no mention of L3 or SIMD extension. A cluster only has about 64 GB/s bandwidth shared between 8 cores. All this tells me this won't be a high performance design, certainly not something suitable for a many-core server. It may well beat current RISC-V cores, but that's a pretty low bar.

Says 8 fetch / 8 wide exec specifically. This is 8 exec ports and probably 4 decode. That doesn't say is watts per core / frequency.

[tuxd3v]

woow,
Those guys were silent all this time, and they have being very busy, like gnomes in a cave extracting.. "the precious metal".
That's talking, SMT2 for P series and SMT4 for I series, fantastic.
Now there are a lot of metrics that we don't know, like frequency, cache sizes and a lot of other aspects.

I would love to see more about their interrupt controller(256 interrupts)
I don't know if APLIC/CLINT can compete for example with ARM NVIC, I believe it can't.. sadly.

Hope they have some hardware soon

[PerformanceExpert]

Says 8 fetch / 8 wide exec specifically. This is 8 exec ports and probably 4 decode. That doesn't say is watts per core / frequency.

If that's the case then it's a basic core similar to their ancient P6600 (3-wide, 7 exec ports). I expected a bit more progress in 6.5 years...

[brucehoult]

These kinda prove my point.

IMO these are SBC and Linux compatible in name only. Your average CS student, or average hobbyist, is not going to be able to use these. Forums abound with people spending hours or days trying to get Linux running.

You download an image, dd it to a card, put the card in the board, connect power, and away you go.

Undoubtedly some of that is difficult for some people -- especially disk destroyer -- or the instructions tell them they need to use Balena Etcher, but they have a Mac or Linux and think they need to get hold of a Windows computer.

None of this is any different for a Raspberry Pi. Last time I bought one it didn't come with a pre-flashed card either. Some of my RISC-V boards did come with a ready-to-go cards. Trying to think which ones. The Microchip Icicle for sure. I think the HiFive Unmatched did too. Oh, and the Pi 400. In general, higher priced boards.

A decent SD card costs as much as some of the cheap boards sell for, so if the manufacturer includes a preprogrammed card it doubles the apparent price -- and then people will complain they already have perfectly good cards lying around.

The other big problems are people using poor quality SD cards on a board that wants to actually do fast IO to the card. Or using a poor quality USB power adaptor that can't supply enough current for booting.

[ayumu]

No V extension. Nothing to see here.

Next iteration, perhaps.