Official Ubuntu RISC-V Images Released For StarFive's VisionFive Board

Earlier this summer I wrote about Canonical working to provide good support for StarFive's VisionFive low-cost RISC-V board. That work has now culminated with an Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS image for use on this Chinese RISC-V single board computer.

Canonical engineers spent the past few months back-porting various patches and ensuring that Ubuntu 22.04 LTS could run well on this RISC-V board. The StarFive VisionFive is a currently $179 USD RISC-V board that is intended to run full-blown RISC-V Linux distributions. The board is powered by a dual-core SiFive U74 RV64 SoC @ 1.0GHz, there is 8GB of system memory, a NVDLA deep learning accelerator engine, Tensilica-VP6 Vision DSP, and a neural network engine. The board also has WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.2, HDMI output, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and powered via USB-C or from the 40-pin GPIO header.

StarFive VisionFive SBC

Canonical today formally announced the availability of Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS for the VisionFive RISC-V board. The VisionFive is being supported for 64-bit RISC-V Ubuntu alongside SiFive's Unmatched and the Allwinner Nezha.

Meanwhile StarFive is already teasing that the VisionFive 2 RISC-V SBC will be coming out soon as its successor.