The first RISC-V laptop announced with quad-core CPU, 16GB RAM, Linux support | Hacker News Reader

The first RISC-V laptop announced with quad-core CPU, 16GB RAM, Linux support

phoronix.com

64 pointsmarcodiego11 comments

> The ROMA press release today goes on to note, "A Web3-friendly platform with NFT creation and publication plus integrated MetaMask-style wallet, ROMA will create an even more integrated experience with future AR glasses and AI speakers operating entirely on RISC-V software and powered by RISC-V hardware."

I could feel my face contorting the further I got through that statement.

It is just bad copy. Who cares? RISC-V for personal computing is exciting.

> Who cares?

is the company trying to make a quick buck from speculation before moving on to the next cash grab? or are they trying to make profit by producing an innovative laptop? if i were looking to buy this as a daily driver i would absolutely care, because it has obvious implications for how well-supported the product will be post-launch.

The importance of the RISC-V is probably in the ecosystem rather than an individual piece of hardware (which is a very rare case in today's industry). If they just want to make a quick buck from speculators, those speculators will still send open source projects patches to make the software work on RISC-V (or, who am I kidding, whine about issues until the developers rage-fix-them), and then when the next company comes along to make a RISC-V laptop will have an ever better starting point. The pressure will keep Intel/AMD and ARM on their toes, too.

(I watched this happen with Apple and ARM. AWS has had ARM CPUs forever. I never cared. But then suddenly 90% of your users have an ARM chip, and you have to do something to support them. I even bought an M1 to test stuff on ARM, as someone totally happy with linux/amd64 for my development and production needs. The ecosystem / network effect is strong! Would love to see this happen with RISC-V.)

So basically, if this is a cash grab, you shouldn't buy one, but you should definitely tell other people to buy them. It's probably good for the field of computing as a whole.

That last statement is so evil, If I wasn't ready to buy something for myself why would I ever tell someone else to do it instead?

I don't agree with any of your points. Speculators have never contributed to tech, has crypto/NFT become a better place because of speculators? If anything they have made cryptocurrency into a stigma that gets you weird looks.

This laptop looks like a toy:

- They somehow attached their own blockchain into it (quote: “With built-in PoS, NFT, and MetaMask-style wallet, ROMA is born for the Metaverse,”)

- There's no performance numbers, just marketing buzzword bingo.

- "Get an NFT when you buy one"

- Not mentioning a specific distro makes me wonder what's the driver situation

- ROMA packaging converts to a laptop stand. Designed by Pedro André®.[1]

I honestly don't see how giving money to this project will advance the field of computing. You're not championing RISC-V as a technology, you are championing RISC-V as a marketing buzzword.

[1]: …so they stole the picture from this 10 year old Behance gallery: https://www.behance.net/gallery/2574687/CARDBOARD-LAPTOP-STA... and just put it on the website with no indicaton of how it's actually gonna fold that way??

Crypto is dumb, for sure. And I agree with you, speculators haven't done anything except prevent people from playing computer games at max graphics settings for a couple years.

The statement from the press release, "A Web3-friendly platform with NFT creation and publication plus integrated MetaMask-style wallet", is just marketing copy designed to separate investors from their money. At some point in the not too distant past, everybody and their mother wanted to invest in a Web3 startup. Meanwhile, "hey investors, want to invest in physical manufacturing and by the way we're the first company to ever use this open-sourcey chip," is investor repellant. I'm guessing that the company threw "Web3" in there to turn investors' brains off during the crypto madness to get some funding for the unbelievably-risky hardware startup. And it worked.

The other possibility is they just like crypto things, which is certainly a red flag. They are too late to this party to make anything of it, as far as I can tell, NFTs are dead and buried. Who would buy a laptop aimed at "NFT creation" even during the hype? You certainly don't need RISC-V for that either.

I kind of see your point about RISC-V being a marketing buzzword. It is. Right now, it's "neat" to try some sort of other cpu architecture. There is no reason for you to do it. AMD64 and ARM can run all the software you want to run. Or write.

i can’t actually find the original ROMA/xcalibyte source for this quote? not that i doubt it — the poster listed on their preorder page [1] mentions NFTs — more i’m curious if they rescinded this specific part because of how cringey it was, or something.

^1: https://xcalibyte.com.cn/en/roma-preorder/

Disappointed by the lack of detail in this article.

In fairness the actual PR it's based on is worse.

SOM - System on a module - is that a standard of some kind? Would you be able to swap in another module with say an Arm cpu?

Mentioned in this other article covering the same machine:

https://liliputing.com/2022/07/the-first-laptop-with-a-risc-...

The only thing that really matters about a laptop is whether it has a decent keyboard, like the Lenovo X220's and earlier. So, what will the keyboard be like?

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