A RISC-V laptop or mini PC with Rockchip RK3588-class performance may be coming

At the moment, the best approach would probably be something like the DevTerm, with pluggable compute modules. The RPi 4 CM connectors are compatible with a number of different modules (RPi and Pine64 being at the top of my head) and the DevTerm has a carrier board for them.

If the Pine64 folks decide to resurrect their laptop with one using a CM4 connector, it'll be immediately very upgradable.

Extra points if it has an extra CM4 connector for a laptop-internal network. This way you could have RISC-V and ARM64 (or anything else) immediately available.

On that, I heard someone is thinking about a replacement motherboard with a CM4 plug for the Framework laptop. I'd love that too.

My needs are modest. I want a machine that could be a daily driver for development. either as a board you build as a kit or a full NUC style like an apple tv or the snapdragon kit Microsoft only sold in the US

The Orateck Tofu/CM4 is the right idea. But I could do without so much jank in getting the thing to boot off the m.2 that complicates things and acts as a barrier to entry for new comers. The pi4 is fine but having to use a USB adapter to get reliable SSD storage seems to be an unnecessary complication and feels like being held back on purpose.

If this has the ratified, 1.0 V extension, it is going to be awesome.

Much faster (well over 2x) than a Raspberry Pi 4, similarly priced, and RISC-V.

I am disappointed by the performance of a Linux desktop running in Termux on a snapdragon 888. It was easily 10 to 20 times slower than my desktop. According to geekbench the snapdragon is twice as fast. I am not looking forward to a 40x performance difference.