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Comment by basher | Hacker News Reader

Arstechnica coverage: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/01/seeed-and-beagleboar...

> Although the first hardware run will be entirely $140 / 8GiB systems, lower-cost variants with less RAM are expected in following releases.

> The initial pilot run of BeagleV will use the Vision DSP hardware as a graphics processor, allowing a full graphical desktop environment under Fedora. Following hardware runs will include an unspecified model of Imagine GPU as well.

Sounds like a direct competitor to the Raspberry Pi. I don't know if the Imagine GPU planned for the next iteration is playing catch-up or leapfrog. The Arstechnica article links to SiFive creates global network of RISC-V startups [1] which I think demonstrates that SiFive is strategically leveraging or responding to the geopolitics surrounding Chinese technology.

[1] https://www.eenewsanalog.com/news/sifive-creates-global-netw...

> Sounds like a direct competitor to the Raspberry Pi.

I would consider the Black and Green to be competitors too.

https://beagleboard.org/

Would be really interested to get a good analysis of the Raspberry Pi, BB Black, and this new board.

Regarding the BBB/BBG, in the last 3-5 years the RPis have gotten significantly faster (RPi3 & 4) and gone 64-bit whereas the BBB & BBG haven't changed much (aside from a bit more eMMC and a very minor CPU bump) since they were launched. These days the 1GHZ 32-bit AM3358 (BBB RevC) is comparatively much slower and with only 512MB RAM, that's a lot less than a stock RPi 4.

Having said that, the BBBs are a great device! They're rock solid and have far better I/O options than the RPi: 4 UARTS, multiple I2C, SPI & CAN buses, EHRPWM, a ton of GPIO, 2x PRU processors, LCD driver, both USB and USB Gadget, oh and of course, the onboard eMMC is great compared to booting from an SD.

So I'm psyched about the Beagle-V.

>>*SiFive is strategically leveraging or responding to the geopolitics surrounding Chinese technology.*

interesting subtext.

We should all be debating HW WRT the fact that you can't name a single device (aside from weapons) that does not contain a single-non-chinese-manufactured component...

every phone or machine is almost 100% chinese built.

"designed by apple in cupertino california" (but made with slave labor from congo, china and other countries)

And we already know about all the backdoors both China and the US do...

FFS we have known about Eschelon since the 70s - the carnivor, room 641A, etc... etc....

Indeed, the geopolitics works both ways. I think the Chinese are looking at RISC-V as a safe-guard against American embargoes of the kind that killed/maimed HiSilicon, the non-Chinese nation-states are looking for full transparency of silicon design, and the manufacturers want full access to a truly global market that includes China. I'm not sure that SiFive RISC-V designs can be competitive with ARM/x64 in the short-term but the geopolitics creates a potential niche.

I think you are conflating assembly and manufacturing. TSMC is Taiwanese and Samsung is South Korean. Personally I'd prefer that all nation-states and their security organizations followed the Golden Rule and promoted free trade rather than protectionism.

> made with slave labor from congo, china and other countries

I don't equate low-wage manufacturing/assembly with exploitation and certainly not slavery but I understand that this is a common metaphor. Contemporary slavery [1] is a real thing and, until I see contrary evidence, I'm assuming it makes zero contribution to high-tech assembly or manufacturing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Contemporary_slavery

You have my upvote, but not my agreement;

We have min wage in the US, and even that is not equal across all states - we do not have UBI or universal health care, we have shitty industries, such as insurance (forced hedge funds) and in general, we have brainwashing people to accept it as normal.

fuck that.

YC even wants you to think that all VC is all-truistic NOPE.

The fact that the congo is listed means that they're including the literal chattel slavery that's common in the mineral extraction process there.

Imagination GPU :( Notorious for being hard to support in open source. I'm not even sure there was a single free driver for those.

That likely means those devices are going to be stuck on an outdated kernel, unless Imagination steps in and provides ongoing binary support for newer kernels for their GPUs like x86 GPU manufacturers do. However, this being RISC-V with 2 existing devices total, I don't count on it.

So close, yet so far.

Imagination have said they're open-sourcing the drivers for the GPU on another RISC-V board that's supposed to be coming soon (PicoRio).

Probably those work here too.

Is it me or does it really feel obnoxious for vendors to then be claiming their hardware to be "TRULY OPEN SOURCE"?

Except for cost... which has been a problem for the BeagleBoard line of SBC's since the beginning. They actually predated the original Raspberry Pi by a couple of years but when the Pi came in at ~25% of the cost, they caught up and overtook the BeagleBoard in popularity fast. The BeagleV looks interesting from an early adopter standpoint but the hobbyist market will probably standardize around whatever decent RISC-V board comes in at sub-$50 first.

To me, they seem to serve different markets. The various BeagleBoards have more industrial specs like a wider operating temperature range, on-board EMMC, etc. Also, the pair of PRU's make them useful for things where more precise timing is important.

There's something wrong with that page in Firefox. It pegs a whole CPU core and eats tons of memory.

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