RISC-V Changes Merged For Linux 4.18, Early Perf Subsystem Work

[phoronix]

Phoronix: RISC-V Changes Merged For Linux 4.18, Early Perf Subsystem Work

Initial RISC-V architecture support was added to the Linux 4.15 kernel and in succeeding kernel releases have been mostly modest updates. With Linux 4.18 the RISC-V changes are on the small side still, but with a few notable additions for this open-source, royalty-free processor ISA...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RISC-V-Linux-4.18-Changes

[uid313]

Now if only we could get something comparable to the Snapdragon or Exynos.
A RISC-V board with 8 cores at 2+ GHz, 2+ GB LP-DDR4, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.

[Luke_Wolf]

Now if only we could get something comparable to the Snapdragon or Exynos.
A RISC-V board with 8 cores at 2+ GHz, 2+ GB LP-DDR4, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.

It's bound to be brought to market eventually, most of the major ARM licensees are on board with RISC-V after all: Qualcomm, Samsung, Mediatek, Allwinner.

[CreepingNormality]

And at a decent price, which is something the SiFive Risc-V board is not, especially if you want the expansion board too.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unleashed

https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expansion-board

$3000 for both boards, not to mention the money to buy the GPU and SSD or anything else you'll want to plug into it.

[Laser]

Every time RISC-V comes up, I see the argument with the high prices for the currently available boards. Can you people stop? Don't you see the difference between a) single-board computers that use readily available chipsets put together on a small board with a focus on low cost and b) a low volume development board that features its own hardware implementation?

Even ARM evaluation kits can cost you multiple hundreds, and that is for large volume chips. The fact that those RISC-V boards can be sold sub-$1000 is an amazing feat. They're not meant to be ran as a home server or anything (though you could do that).

[CreepingNormality]

Every time RISC-V comes up, I see the argument with the high prices for the currently available boards. Can you people stop? Don't you see the difference between a) single-board computers that use readily available chipsets put together on a small board with a focus on low cost and b) a low volume development board that features its own hardware implementation?

Even ARM evaluation kits can cost you multiple hundreds, and that is for large volume chips. The fact that those RISC-V boards can be sold sub-$1000 is an amazing feat. They're not meant to be ran as a home server or anything (though you could do that).

I agree with you, admittedly i should've been a bit more detailed on my point of view in my previous post. The overall costs of designing and manufacturing an SBC that utilizes a whole new architecture that has had no previous market position for less than a grand is very impressive indeed. I kept a link to an article on Adapteva's website when the parallella was being brought to market which gives you a good idea of the costs involved.

http://www.adapteva.com/andreas-blog/semiconductor-economics-101/

I believe this to be a critical time for Risc-V to make some headway into the market and possibly make some inroads as a genuine competitor to x86 and ARM, and not just as a new microcontroller for high-end product lines. It's just the cost of it is still outside the budget of alot of developers/hobbyists that would like to get their hands on one, which is where we can see some real innovation.

[kallisti5]

And at a decent price, which is something the SiFive Risc-V board is not, especially if you want the expansion board too.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unleashed

https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expansion-board

$3000 for both boards, not to mention the money to buy the GPU and SSD or anything else you'll want to plug into it.

Yeah, it's custom designed silicon on custom-designed PCB's produced at a low scale. $999 isn't that horrible compared to a lot of other boards fitting into that space.
Welcome to being an early adopter. Prices will come down.