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Ubuntu Bring-Up Happening For The StarFive VisionFive 2 RISC-V Board

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  • Ubuntu Bring-Up Happening For The StarFive VisionFive 2 RISC-V Board

    Phoronix: Ubuntu Bring-Up Happening For The StarFive VisionFive 2 RISC-V Board

    This summer saw official Ubuntu Linux images released for the StarFive VisionFive RISC-V board while now Canonical engineers are working to ensure their Linux distribution is all squared away for the upcoming VisionFive 2...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Sounds good... apart from "Imagination GPU"... what's the support for that like? Frame buffer?

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    • #3
      Originally posted by OneTimeShot View Post
      Sounds good... apart from "Imagination GPU"... what's the support for that like? Frame buffer?
      Support is imaginary. Hence the name.

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      • #4
        Imagination Technologies is working on an open source driver for their GPUs. See their announcement:

        We are releasing open-source drivers for some of our PowerVR GPUs. Read more about it in our blog post.


        And their development links:

        Open Source GPU driver Allows silicon vendors, OEMs and graphics developers to take control of their complete graphics software stack. “In development” access to Open Source GPU drivers for Rogue GPU architecture now available, offering to the open source community Maximum flexibility to add, remove, customise features for their specific use cases High quality open ... Read more


        Granted, the exact GPU on the JH7110 (the SoC on the VisionFive 2) does not appear to be in their list for the initial driver, I hope that the future we may see open source drivers for it (but I am not holding my breath yet).

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        • #5
          Go opensuse!

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          • #6
            Will the Ethernet deliver real speeds or will it be like the crappy Raspberry Pi where it is shared with the USB bus?
            Four cores are quite few with even the cheapest phones now have eight cores.
            1.5 GHz is rather low clock, I would like to see it at 2.0 GHz at least.
            All cores are the same, I would like to see a heterogeneous architecture with 4 strong cores and 4 weak cores.
            How will it be powered? Can it be powered over USB-C with be compliant with USB Power Delivery specification?

            This costs more than the Raspberry Pi 4 and while both have four cores and are clocked at the same 1.5 GHz, I think the Raspberry Pi 4 will outperform the VisionFive 2 any time of the day. I saw some benchmarks of VisionFive's other RISC-V soc and it like $500 and performed shit poor, the Raspberry Pi 4 was running laps around it.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by uid313 View Post
              Will the Ethernet deliver real speeds or will it be like the crappy Raspberry Pi where it is shared with the USB bus?
              Four cores are quite few with even the cheapest phones now have eight cores.
              1.5 GHz is rather low clock, I would like to see it at 2.0 GHz at least.
              All cores are the same, I would like to see a heterogeneous architecture with 4 strong cores and 4 weak cores.
              How will it be powered? Can it be powered over USB-C with be compliant with USB Power Delivery specification?

              This costs more than the Raspberry Pi 4 and while both have four cores and are clocked at the same 1.5 GHz, I think the Raspberry Pi 4 will outperform the VisionFive 2 any time of the day. I saw some benchmarks of VisionFive's other RISC-V soc and it like $500 and performed shit poor, the Raspberry Pi 4 was running laps around it.
              Now is definitely not the time to use RISC-V for everyday use. The crappy thing is, with the price and capabilities, I don't see a lot of enthusiasts wanting to devote any time for it, which will only slow down progress.

              As for Ethernet, why don't you just use one of the many alternatives to the Pi that do a proper Ethernet implementation? I get that the Raspberry Pi is basically the standard for low-power SBCs and I get why people aren't satisfied with RPs, but I don't really understand why people look for alternatives (like in RISC-V) as if the RP is the only alternative.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by schmidtbag View Post
                Now is definitely not the time to use RISC-V for everyday use. The crappy thing is, with the price and capabilities, I don't see a lot of enthusiasts wanting to devote any time for it, which will only slow down progress.
                As you said, these aren't for everyday use, these are dev boards. They are for developers moving to RISC-V or wishing to test their software on real hardware. They're not for hobbiests to fiddle with at this point. Sure you can always look at things through that lens, but know from the beginning that these boards are not aimed at you, so don't get your hopes up just yet. uid313 clearly misunderstands their intended market. The take away from this announcement is that RISC-V *actual hardware* is becoming readily available to even low budget developers so that they can test their stoftware on it--including such things as tuning for better performance. Many codes run well on x86 and ARM today because they've had decades to tune the code to work well there and to implement ASM optimizations for critical bits. RISC-V is pretty much using all native language code not optimized for it. I'm not saying that the RISC-V cores we see right now are super performers, but we're looking at mediocre cores in the worst light possible. So, the more these boards become widely available (cheaper, easy to find, and better supported by distros) the better we're going to see apps performing on RISC-V in the future.

                This is like tasting the batter and saying that the cake sucks.

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                • #9
                  The thing is these boards are ramping up rapidly in performance. This thing is not quite credible yet considering RPI4 specs, but the whole ecosystem is ramping up exponentially, as far as I can see, so I'm quite interested in lifting one of these as I really like the idea of RISC V over ARM. RPI4 is great 'n all but you still can't get one at a reasonable price. With the Foundation seemingly pushing the Pico nowadays, there's space for a new challenger with RISC V.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by uid313 View Post
                    Will the Ethernet deliver real speeds or will it be like the crappy Raspberry Pi where it is shared with the USB bus?
                    The Raspberry Pi 4 no longer shares the USB bus with Ethernet and can saturate the 1 GbE port: https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articl...ecs-benchmarks

                    Cheers

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