Ubuntu will not support RISC-V CPUs without RVA23 support going further, so this is stuck on 24.04 forever. There is no official Debian image either, and the Ubuntu version uses fixed kernel 6.6.47 with no further updates (it is not even installed from a repo).
I own one since a couple months ago but I already regret the purchase.
Not bad at all, but the OpenWRT image still didn’t have Wi-Fi support a week or so ago, so I don’t know how good software support is going to be in the long run.
Don't suppose there's actually documentation for the CPU anywhere?
(I mean more than a tiny "datasheet" with a very high level overview and/or a pile of random Linux/uboot patches)
for tasks like face recognition and object detection, would this type of hardware have good performance in real world cases? or, what is the standard hardware that devs use for tasks like that?
Yes, lots of Intel and AMD based SBCs have SO-DIMM slots, but you'll have to accept the 3.5" format.
Regarding RISC-V SBCs, there was serious consideration to release the Milk-V Oasis with SG2380 and LPCAMM2. But this didn't work out as the SG2380 was held up by geopolitical issues.
Not really. Most in the ARM space, at least, are soldered on or you need to switch out the entire compute module. Intel ones (not mini-PCs, but industrial gear and things like the LattePanda) also tend to have soldered RAM.
And I think a language like golang can be a really really nice fit given how it can be compiled really fast towards risc-v as well
Maybe java also runs in risc-v I am not sure, surely people are working on java support I suppose.
People buy risc-v to support an open standard and to not worry about licensing fees.
Isro (india's nasa basically) uses some risc-v chips to not license arm chips etc. because of either better national security (to have less arm influence) or because they don't want licensing fees given how rudiculously price efficient isro is.
There's a RV64 port of Debian and the RV2 and R2S are on the list of compatible hardware. No guarantee it'll be easy getting it loaded, it was like pulling teeth to get it on the SiFive U74 board, but that was 7 years ago, so it's GOT to be better by now.
Hopefully Adafruit or someone could get these[1] out of "Contact Us" jail. 16GB 30TOPS BF16 in M.2 2280 at $369. PCIe 2x8 low profile "Duo" configuration available at $799. Supposedly. I believe the theoretical performance is Strix territory if these could be clustered, but only if they mass manufacture these.
Part of the problem is that every ASIC manufacturer (and indeed each fabrication process) has a different toolchain with a different set of primitives for circuit design. Yosys and other open tooling for FPGAs has helped a great deal in lowering the barrier to chip design and by association reuse of circuits. But every ASIC, at the moment, is tied to some vendor's PDK. Here's the one Google open sourced for Cypress Semi's SKY130 process node: https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk
It is at least theoretically possible to build a headless "GPU" from RISC-V processors that have the vector extension (RVV). RVV had been designed to be able to run programs compiled for the SIMT execution model that most GPUs use.
This Orange Pi RV2 has a small vector unit in each core, and could be used for at least prototyping the software until more powerful chips are available.
BTW. There have also been a couple hardware startups that have been working on commercial GPUs based on RISC-V's vector extension, with their own GPU-specific instruction set extensions for texture lookup and the like.
Hardware patents are orthogonal to open source software. If a patent covers the hardware then someone who wants to manufacture the hardware needs to license the patent, but you were never going to get free-as-in-beer hardware anyway, and a hardware patent is independent of whether the hardware is fully documented or has firmware with published source code and a license that allows users to make changes to it.
I bought the 32 GB emmc module for it, for the root filesystem. I have a 500 GB nvme drive for everything else. I believe an nvme-to-sata riser will work, but I don't have one to test with (plus you'd need to power the sata drive with something else).
Depends what you're using it for. A lot of people tend to buy pi-likes as servers which is absolutely bonkers. If you time eBay right, $50 would get you a fairly powerful intel NUC with much more performance and peripherals
I don't think it's bonkers. For running a true home server sure, there's more powerful things out there. But for hosting something like a ZigBee and Z-wave coördinator a Pi makes much more sense. Electricity is expensive, yo
RISC-V going forward, one of the only beacons of hope in the silicon world.
I need one of such devices for my self-hosted services. And it will be time to port from C to assembly, really, because we have finally a CPU ISA which is 'sweet spot' balanced, standard, global, pushed forward with significant resources and without IP locks anywhere. No more developer/vendor lock-in via "the only compiler able to generate correct machine code", extremely hard to do planned obsolescence, etc, we need mainstream adoption NOW :)
The main blocker: how do I buy such device with a noscript/basic (x)html browser? And no way I use a credit card on a web site: would require well identified bank swift account, or wallet codes bought from local and physical currency terminals. I don't know of any local retailers I can buy such device from. Yep, the "web geniuses" at amazon (which supports wallet code) broke noscript/basic (x)html support a few years ago.
Ubuntu will not support RISC-V CPUs without RVA23 support going further, so this is stuck on 24.04 forever. There is no official Debian image either, and the Ubuntu version uses fixed kernel 6.6.47 with no further updates (it is not even installed from a repo).
I own one since a couple months ago but I already regret the purchase.
Building Debian for this board is pretty easy nowadays. You can also find prebuilt images.
>I own one since a couple months ago but I already regret the purchase.
This is me with every single SBC
> this is stuck on 24.04 forever
But as a basis for IoT projects that's perfectly fine. They're meant to be install and forget.
I had a go at it a few months ago: https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/12/2230
Not bad at all, but the OpenWRT image still didn’t have Wi-Fi support a week or so ago, so I don’t know how good software support is going to be in the long run.
Don't suppose there's actually documentation for the CPU anywhere? (I mean more than a tiny "datasheet" with a very high level overview and/or a pile of random Linux/uboot patches)
Spacemit's website is a pain to use, but the processor appears to work almost exactly like the K1, so:
- go to https://developer.spacemit.com/
- click on documentation
- click on Keystone
- click on K1
Raspberry wouldn't be the market leader if Orange, Rock and the rest could write documentation and support to save their life.
for tasks like face recognition and object detection, would this type of hardware have good performance in real world cases? or, what is the standard hardware that devs use for tasks like that?
Are there any SBC with memory slot so that i can plug in 32GiB or more of RAM?
Yes, lots of Intel and AMD based SBCs have SO-DIMM slots, but you'll have to accept the 3.5" format.
Regarding RISC-V SBCs, there was serious consideration to release the Milk-V Oasis with SG2380 and LPCAMM2. But this didn't work out as the SG2380 was held up by geopolitical issues.
Still so mad about that
Orange pi 5 plus has 32gb versions. Pricey though
No memory slot though
Not really. Most in the ARM space, at least, are soldered on or you need to switch out the entire compute module. Intel ones (not mini-PCs, but industrial gear and things like the LattePanda) also tend to have soldered RAM.
Anyone have openssl benchmarks? I.e. run "openssl speed" and post the output. Thanks!
I don't know if it uses the vector instructions.
https://gist.github.com/faried/6955a992c6d68362fd1e07a1cd575...
Absolutely smoked by rpi5, often by rpi4. To make matters worse, a radically unsupported core with no mainline support. https://www.phoronix.com/review/orange-pi-rv2-benchmarks/2
Don’t think people buy riscv for their performance competitiveness at this stage
People don't really buy RISCV at all at this point, there's noting less compatible you could get if you tried.
isn't there box64 that can run x64 applications?
And I think a language like golang can be a really really nice fit given how it can be compiled really fast towards risc-v as well
Maybe java also runs in risc-v I am not sure, surely people are working on java support I suppose.
People buy risc-v to support an open standard and to not worry about licensing fees.
Isro (india's nasa basically) uses some risc-v chips to not license arm chips etc. because of either better national security (to have less arm influence) or because they don't want licensing fees given how rudiculously price efficient isro is.
I keep seeing suggestions that theres no software support for Orange Pi.
Whats the go there? Is there no distro like Raspbian supporting it?
Xunlong (Orange Pi) operates similarly to Pine64, throw hardware at the community and then let the community figure out the software part.
They provide official OS images at release but don't care much afterwards.
There's a RV64 port of Debian and the RV2 and R2S are on the list of compatible hardware. No guarantee it'll be easy getting it loaded, it was like pulling teeth to get it on the SiFive U74 board, but that was 7 years ago, so it's GOT to be better by now.
There are plenty of Orange Pi boards with Armbian or unofficial Ubuntu support, but they’re ARM based.
2 TOPS is not a lot for AI projects.
Hopefully Adafruit or someone could get these[1] out of "Contact Us" jail. 16GB 30TOPS BF16 in M.2 2280 at $369. PCIe 2x8 low profile "Duo" configuration available at $799. Supposedly. I believe the theoretical performance is Strix territory if these could be clustered, but only if they mass manufacture these.
1: https://www.edgecortix.com/en/hardware
They get this number by simply adding up all CPUs' processing speed. There is no NPU or similar: https://medium.com/@zlodeibaal/orange-pi-rv2-ai-board-scam-7...
It's a lot for 40 USD. And not every AI project is a Language Model project.
meh. i write a lot of PROLOG, so 2 TOPS is A LOT of horsepower.
I don't like RISC-V unless it has a good GPU
Theoretically the vector extensions in a RISC-V could be scaled considerably, it seems to me, especially when combined with the extension proposed here: https://github.com/spacemit-com/riscv-ime-extension-spec
That said, the actual processor cores in this SBC seem to max out at 256 bit registers, which does not seem to be a lot.
RISC-V designs typically have an Imagination Technologies GPU, some support for them is in recent versions of Linux and mesa.
GPUs are [effectively] irrelevant for many use cases (IoT, embedded, most servers, etc)
the title says "... AI projects". now, maybe our definitions are different, but you probably want some hardware acceleration.
Most likely comming in vector, matrix instructions or NPU like chipsets, not necessarly GPUs.
The chip (KY X1) comes with AI acceleration...
Attach your favourite GPU at the PCIe slot.
they all suck. someone needs to make an open source gpu already, its been way too long.
We did back in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project
And there have been some others as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_...
Recently https://www.furygpu.com/
Part of the problem is that every ASIC manufacturer (and indeed each fabrication process) has a different toolchain with a different set of primitives for circuit design. Yosys and other open tooling for FPGAs has helped a great deal in lowering the barrier to chip design and by association reuse of circuits. But every ASIC, at the moment, is tied to some vendor's PDK. Here's the one Google open sourced for Cypress Semi's SKY130 process node: https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk
It is at least theoretically possible to build a headless "GPU" from RISC-V processors that have the vector extension (RVV). RVV had been designed to be able to run programs compiled for the SIMT execution model that most GPUs use.
This Orange Pi RV2 has a small vector unit in each core, and could be used for at least prototyping the software until more powerful chips are available.
BTW. There have also been a couple hardware startups that have been working on commercial GPUs based on RISC-V's vector extension, with their own GPU-specific instruction set extensions for texture lookup and the like.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/startup-clai...
It's probably a series of patent landmines...
Hardware patents are orthogonal to open source software. If a patent covers the hardware then someone who wants to manufacture the hardware needs to license the patent, but you were never going to get free-as-in-beer hardware anyway, and a hardware patent is independent of whether the hardware is fully documented or has firmware with published source code and a license that allows users to make changes to it.
More info here from a few months back: https://boilingsteam.com/orange-pi-rv2-new-risc-v-board-revi...
No SATA :(
I bought the 32 GB emmc module for it, for the root filesystem. I have a 500 GB nvme drive for everything else. I believe an nvme-to-sata riser will work, but I don't have one to test with (plus you'd need to power the sata drive with something else).
$40 is too expensive
Depends what you're using it for. A lot of people tend to buy pi-likes as servers which is absolutely bonkers. If you time eBay right, $50 would get you a fairly powerful intel NUC with much more performance and peripherals
I don't think it's bonkers. For running a true home server sure, there's more powerful things out there. But for hosting something like a ZigBee and Z-wave coördinator a Pi makes much more sense. Electricity is expensive, yo
RISC-V going forward, one of the only beacons of hope in the silicon world.
I need one of such devices for my self-hosted services. And it will be time to port from C to assembly, really, because we have finally a CPU ISA which is 'sweet spot' balanced, standard, global, pushed forward with significant resources and without IP locks anywhere. No more developer/vendor lock-in via "the only compiler able to generate correct machine code", extremely hard to do planned obsolescence, etc, we need mainstream adoption NOW :)
The main blocker: how do I buy such device with a noscript/basic (x)html browser? And no way I use a credit card on a web site: would require well identified bank swift account, or wallet codes bought from local and physical currency terminals. I don't know of any local retailers I can buy such device from. Yep, the "web geniuses" at amazon (which supports wallet code) broke noscript/basic (x)html support a few years ago.