RISC-V has been in the “promising” phase for a long time now, especially for general purpose computing, never really breaking through into the mainstream in any measurable way. While I think that breakthrough is still relatively far away, we now do have newer RISC-V SoCs on the market supporting the RVA23 baseline RISC-V profile. One of them is the SpacemiT Key Stone KЗ, which promises to deliver a massive performance increase over previous RISC-V offerings. It’s exactly this chip that’s finding its way into complete, turnkey mini PC solutions, like this one from a company called Firefly.
The base model comes with 8GB of LDDPR5 RAM and 128GB of storage, at a price of about €300 or so (there’s also a 32GB/128GB model at well over €600). This is the first time I’m looking at a complete RISC-V solution where I feel like it might actually make for a good moment to jump in for us enthusiasts. No, the performance won’t rival anything Intel or AMD has to offer, but it seems capable enough for a lot of day-to-day tasks, and I’m curious to see just how far along the Linux world is when it comes to RISC-V support.
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I always have the same problem with this kind of stuff: ARM and RISC-V PC-level-boards (I am not talking about RPi and other SBCs) need to be either more powerful (at the same price point) or way cheaper than Intel/AMD options to be actually useful. What is the point of getting a slower RISC-V PC/mini-PC when you get an Intel or AMD one with less issues and more performance, at the same or at a lower price (not even considering the tons of used hardware available on eBay and such) ? Unless, of course, you like to tinker and experiment with different architectures, or have a niche case in mind, and that’s of course fine.
I obviously understand these platforms need time to grow and become popular, but they have been available for some time now, and the progress has been abysmally slow. I wanted to buy an Orion O6, but the price, though not absolutely bad, makes no sense when looking at the numbers.
This situation is classic. For how many years has ARM been around and only now it is becoming mainstream for multiple use cases? 30+?
And ARM has had the luxury (and developer mindspace) of being the defacto architecture for mobile devices since the 90s!
RISC-V doesn’t have this luxury. It will require a lot of love and effort until it can become a viable self-sustaining alternative. And, in my opinion, it’s best fighting chance is to follow ARM’s playbook: find a niche and take the leap from there.
Death can be fast, too. PowerPC had a lot of love from Apple and it basically vanished without that niche. It never became mainstream and never became self-sustaining. x86/amd64 has never had a mobile presence (excluding laptop) and could die fast once ARM reaches critical mass, too.
For me, diversity is essential. Of course, no one is going to develop for 5+ architectures, but a monoculture is never good. I am a hobbist but, whenever I write, I always test hppa, ppc, arm, etc.. It keeps me honest!
It is actually a very promising machine! One of my students is waiting for one to arrive. One of the key characteristics of this computer (or rather, of its CPU, the SpacemiT K3) is that it’s the first RISC-V chip to incorporate the Zvk* vectorial cryptographic extensions. We will probably be able to share some insight into this system soon!