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

[Mark Rose]

I'm tempted to buy one. Would be nice if there were case options available.

[Namelesswonder]

My Kickstarter 100M/GbE model is coming in next month, with the separate GbE/GbE coming in February.

Probably going to be using the GbE/GbE model as a router, and doing testing on the other. Will probably be more performant than most consumer routers that are only dual-core or only 1GHz. Also get to run what I want on it unlike most routers.

Best to get ahead of the curve and start testing now while ARM's days are numbered if Arm keeps on running the company they way they are now.

[Danny3]

If I had one of these boards, I would definitely not use Ubuntu, not with Canonical's bullshit attitude and very good friendship with Microsoft!

[ayumu]

Will the Ethernet deliver real speeds or will it be like the crappy Raspberry Pi where it is shared with the USB bus?

Real speeds. And 2x GbE, not just one. Also, Raspberry Pi 4 doesn't have this problem either, that's just the older models where all I/O is through a USB hub.

Four cores are quite few with even the cheapest phones now have eight cores.

Nitpick. The SoC also obviously wasn't designed for the board; Considering low power and range of I/O, I'd expect it'll be found in all sort of devices. Kiosks, public displays, network equipment and what not.

1.5 GHz is rather low clock, I would like to see it at 2.0 GHz at least.

There might be boards like that. But at 1.5GHz, the VisionFive2 SoC consumption is such that it absolutely does not need a heatsink.

All cores are the same, I would like to see a heterogeneous architecture with 4 strong cores and 4 weak cores.

And the kitchensink. The point of this board is to cheaply get RISC-V chips to a horde of developers and early-adopter power users. Low price and large numbers.

How will it be powered? Can it be powered over USB-C with be compliant with USB Power Delivery specification?

Via USB-PD, via GPIO or via PoE (optional module needed). 5V 3A is suggested, but actual consumption is expected to be really low, especially static power (idle).

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.

Some 80% of rpi4's CPU performance is expected, but that's assuming a well-cooled rpi4 that does not throttle (such as the 400). GPU is claimed to be 4x as fast as rpi4. Hardware video decoding acceleration is also one tier better. And the I/O bandwidth between SoC and the world is also stronger than rpi4's. Therefore, the expectation is that the desktop experience will eventually be better than rpi4.

However, if you want a trouble-free experience from day 0, get a rpi4 instead. The point of this board is to get RISC-V to developers, and accelerate RISC-V software support.

The expectation is that a lot of software will be slow or not build/run at all at launch. But this is the board that will multiply the amount of RISC-V developers out there, and drive the effort to get the ecosystem there.

[ayumu]

but we're looking at mediocre cores in the worst light possible.

The cores are SiFive U74-MP, specifically the 2021Q1 version. These are much faster than the version in the last SiFive devboard, and they also clock higher. They also have B extension, and are possibly at RVA22 level of compliance (we'll see).

I wouldn't call them mediocre, as they are VERY competitive; What ARM has at a similar power bucket (Cortex A55) is way slower and uses much larger die area.

In the worst light possible isn't totally accurate either; There's seriously nice I/O and features in the SoC, with GPU that's 4x as fast as the rpi4's, 2x GbE. USB3, M.2 pci-e and what not.

What is totally true is that the software ecosystem won't be there at launch. And this board purpose is precisely to enable an order of magnitude larger body of developers to work on RISC-V, thanks to it being available to the general public and priced under $100.

[andrei_me]

ayumu you seen to be very informed in regards RISC-V, are you involved in something in this area or just a really curious person?

[ayumu]

ayumu you seen to be very informed in regards RISC-V, are you involved in something in this area or just a really curious person?

I first heard about and started tracking RISC-V circa 2017. Played with it (writing assembly and such) starting around the time k210 development boards started shipping, of which I got one. Became an individual member of RISC-V org at some point. I also have written an emulator for fun (just bare RV32I) that I might release someday.

Otherwise, I am not involved. Yet this much involvement is definitely beyond that of the average person.