Ubuntu 22.10 Aiming To Support The $16+ Sipeed LicheeRV RISC-V Board

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 22.10 Aiming To Support The $16+ Sipeed LicheeRV RISC-V Board

In addition to Ubuntu supporting the StarFive VisionFive and Nezha RISC-V boards, Canonical engineers are also working on supporting the Sipeed LicheeRV board too for next month's 22.10 release. The Sipeed LicheeRV is notable in being one of the cheapest RISC-V boards out there: pricing starts at $16.90 USD...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-22.10-Sipeed-LicheeRV

[schmidtbag]

Are those M.2 connectors there so it acts as an expansion card for a M.2 slot? Seems a little strange that it has a pair of them too.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

*Dock sold separately......

maybe 12bucks usd...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256803584353779.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.552e2ee25IDleP&algo_pvid=1377dac4-1e82-4ec7-9ed4-d45076c92cb3&algo_exp_id=1377dac4-1e82-4ec7-9ed4-d45076c92cb3-1&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000027107728034%22%7D&pdp_npi=2%40dis%21USD%2111.28%2111.28%21%21%21%21%21%40210318cf16633417636273982e5af5%2112000027107728034%21sea&curPageLogUid=54Ye8FT0ghPo

[Viki Ai]

Are those M.2 connectors there so it acts as an expansion card for a M.2 slot? Seems a little strange that it has a pair of them too.

I'm pretty sure M.2 here is only for the readily-available, so cheap, physical connector*. Not unlike how the Pi 3 compute module used a DRAM socket physical connector, but was definitely not for insertion into a DRAM socket.

* so they should really be using an M.2 socket with a G-keying, but that would likely be a non-off-the-shelf part adding more to the carrier-board manufacturing cost, which is something Sispeed would be very cost-sensitive about in devices in this price range. To be fair, with two side-by-side slots, as you note, it is unlikely to fit anything not explicitly designed for it anyway, so the miss-keying is probably not a real issue in this case.

[brucehoult]

I'm pretty sure M.2 here is only for the readily-available, so cheap, physical connector*. Not unlike how the Pi 3 compute module used a DRAM socket physical connector

Exactly. 2x M.2 connectors is much cheaper than the mezzanine connectors used on the Pi 4 CM, and I think cheaper than the SO-DIMM socket used by the Pi 3 and earlier CM.

Sipeed sell a pretty nice expansion board for just $5!