RISC-V Guns for Raspberry Pi, Legacy Chips
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
It's astonishing to me how behind the ARM ecosystem is on this. I still can't buy something like a low-end amd64 computer easily with ARM. There's a few laptops and a few cantankerous oddballs like the ROCKPro64. Then again it's Pine64 mentioned in the RISC V article, so maybe we have more years of oddballs to go.
4 big cores and 4 little cores at 8nm, 2 gigibit ethernets, an AI processor, Wifi6, 5G, 32G RAM, PCIe 3.0, M.2, 4 SATA, 2 HDMI, VGA, HDMI in, RS232, CAN… and idles at 1.3W. Typical ~4W, max 20W.
$460 for basic 4G RAM, 16G storage, prices go up from there.
power consumption
=================
Idle: 1.3 W
Normal: 4.8 W
Max: 20.0 W
It looks like it could be a pretty nice little SFF desktop. The low power draw means you don't need active cooling and it has everything built in so you won't need some dongle (other than power) to integrate. The only issue is that it's not Intel so if your employee needs to run MS Office or be managed from the domain it won't work. But for the receptionist or for a kiosk or many other uses this could be pretty nice, especially if you are trying to cut down on energy use.
A 10 second search turns up plenty of options that will turn that port into 10+ SATA ports for like $65. Dunno about the driver situation in that case though.
The single M.2 slot would probably be used for the OS and maybe a cache. Having just 1 fast drive in an array usually isn't a win.
If it's a desktop, you can put on a large heatsink, there are plenty of passive enclosures for the standard intel NUC
> But for the receptionist
Seems like those would be better off with an 'all-in-one' computer in a monitor, less cables and you need a screen anyway
It may, but the success of these boards will largely depend on other factors. RPi has succeeded because of their clear focus and really strong execution.
It will probably disappoint many but having a CPU with an open ISA isn’t going to be an overriding factor in determining whether any particular SBC succeeds in the market.
I cannot find any Raspberry Pis for sale anywhere I can buy one.
All device drivers onwards are just open and can be kept up to date and used in custom kernels all you want. This is the big difference with other SBCs where you can't really use the devices without closed, version-locked drivers and blobs, and there is no incentive for the manufacturer to make a super-thin encumbered shim to give the most leverage and freedom for everyone else to build on top of that.
The popularity didn't arrive before the intent and work was done to make it hackable, it was the other way around. That, in turn, created the mindshare to make community-driven drivers and alternate firmwares for the VideoCore boot stage.
This is also why they kept the BCM lineage as simple as possible across the PI revisions so all the public reverse engineering and hard work wasn't for nothing and was still portable.
None of this can be said about any RockChip, MediaTek or HiSilicon SoC. Those are more of a consume-and-throw-away type of deal, except for maybe the high-end long-life platforms that share IP with Android devices that also happen to have PM-OS or some XDA fanbase to work on it. Even then they usually lack community knowledge and commercial effort to make it worthwhile.
The closest was the TI-based series like the BeagleBone, and that was for precisely the same reason the Pi got a good start. The bad thing about the BeagleBone was that it didn't have a "see something on your monitor out of the box" experience.
They have an interesting philosophy in their definition of OSHW includes making it easy for others to produce their boards. So not just publishing schematics, but facilitating manufacturing as much as possible.
> Olimex's A20 OLinuXino Lime2 is a fully Open Source Hardware (OSHW) single board computer. This means that the designer is actively helping people using the platform for their own designs, and supports them in adding hardware functionality and production advice. This is a part of freedom that is often overlooked, but very much aligned with the FreedomBox goals.
[1] https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware/A20-OLinuXino-Li...
[1b] https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-...
on the flipside thats still leagues above rpis and you can buy the chips for your own use unlike the broadcom ones
On the other hand, it's not really that much of a big deal since unlike some other chips, it doesn't lock you out of anything, it just does normal basic stuff like making sure the WDT doesn't reset your CPU before you have had a chance to setup the bare minimum of registers and interrupt tables. For me, I'd either have a chip that has a boot vector outside of itself (i.e. some fixed SPI address) or something so small and measurable that it doesn't really matter much (like this BROM).
The big 'next gen' problem we have is somewhat separate but regarding root of trust in hardware it's nearly impossible to make trusted hardware (from a software perspective) without some device specific PKI that is inside the main CPU and cannot be modified from the outside. The big downside is that there is no way to do this after the fact (otherwise a malicious person could do the same), and doing it ahead of time ties it to the hardware vendor or even the chip fab. Sharing things like private keys to whoever buys the chip doesn't work either, as that would make all of the other chips vulnerable as well. PKI-per-chip doesn't work either, as you wouldn't want to maintain a PKI and re-sign everything for evert individual chip.
eFuses seem to be the only other way, or (E)PROM, but those can be attacked using power hacks (i.e. using a ChipWhisperer).
Perhaps a free and open hardware root of trust is just not feasible.
Most of the fully open designs seem to be limited to a handful of silicon like Freescale PowerPC, a few ARM and MIPS SoCs and RISC-V-based systems which can still have closed Boot ROMs of course (like Intel and AMD x86 CPUs).
At some point I had high hopes there would be a reverse engineering effort for the Marvell Armada chips but that never really went anywhere and a ton of otherwise useful boards are essentially useless nowadays.
IMO the people stressing about open designs are the ones that don't want to pay for anything above RPi prices. Like I said: job security.
It's not immune to supply issues as well, but that's because a ton of mid-range automakers use it in their IVI systems. The 7 is a safe haven because it doesn't have the video and camera codecs in hardware.
I keep an eye on RISC-V as well, but until I can get one with a 5-10 year production horizon I'll wait to order eval kits.
I was looking at the iMx8 but like you said, anything with automotive or embedded applications in mass produced systems is hard to get. I've seem them used in security devices that do a bit of on-device pre-authentication and even there I'm hearing about supply issues. It was mostly Apalis COM based but they had the benefit of switching between a Tegra and iMx version whenever supply was getting constrained. (or essentially the prices started getting bumped before the next order cycle) I think the lead times for some models became over 36 months at some point (either the imx8 ones or the Tegra ones)... yikes.
Regarding the GPU and DMA blocks: that seems to be the standard at this stage. I guess it's because it's mostly licensed IP and because they need to honour the NDA from their upstream vendor, we're just getting the blobs as a side-effect. Same with the Zinq and some of the Sitara GPU cores they got from PowerVR. Luckily, that last one has gotten a lot of FOSS attention and besides loading some startup firmware or microcode it's largely free.
The whole 'freedom' thing doesn't have to be an ultimate goal here, but it does have the nice side-effect that it opens up the use of mainline source trees, broadly used and well-maintained tools and toolchains etc. instead of just some giant tarball the vendor prepared for a specific kernel and boot loader combination. And if the vendor decides to focus on the next new shiny thing, you can just port/upstream sources as needed to keep your project going, vendor be damned.
Also, the SODIMM connector is long in the tooth and gives off a shitton of RF radiation especially when you're driving an LCD over the rails. But the alternatives like the Hirose mezz connectors aren't optimal either.
NXP/Freescale's kernel isn't the greatest but at least they try to get close to mainline. TI gets a thumbs up as well.
Perhaps some form factor with a required low-density power + slow data interface and an optional high-density high-speed data interface would be the sweet spot. But if even something like M.2 standardisation tells us anything, even that is going to be a mess.
I guess we're stuck with foil tape for the time being.
RISC-V is much more open than ARM, but it is definitely lacking in performance and widespread support (and integrated GPU?.) Thus do not dump the ARM line, but add an alternative so as this market further develops, Raspberry Pi is there.
(I found this: https://abopen.com/news/raspberry-pi-foundation-announces-ri...)
Don't misunderstand this as a criticism either. The rest of the hobbyist SBC ecosystem has had no such guidance or overarching plan, and it's a complete mess of overpriced and/or poorly supported boards. Broadcom put in the hard yards to make their product successful and we're all better off for it.
If there is a requirement to stick with Boardroom, can Broadcom start experimenting with RISC-V? It is probably strategy for Broadcom as well...
BTW I found this: https://abopen.com/news/raspberry-pi-foundation-announces-ri...
Again that's fine and the 10+ years of excellent Raspberry Pi user experience speak for themselves. I'm glad Broadcom did this.
But the purpose is to sell Broadcom SBCs, not to make an open source hardware platform.
IF there is a RISC-V Pi, it'll be because Broadcom see benefit for the rest of their product lines. Not to make open source Linux and ISA nerds happy.
And yet RP2040 exists; an in-house ARM design manufactured by TSMC.
I'm not sure this is true. Do we have any actual proof?
RPi’s purpose is educational - consistent with their charitable status - it’s definitely not to sell Broadcom SoCs or (except to the extent that this overlaps with their educational purpose) to make an open source hardware platform - although it seems a lot of commenters here think it is or should be.
This is definitively false and anyone can look at the foundation’s governance and legal and financial structure to see this.
Both parts of this are completely wrong. I live and work in Cambridge UK, and know several people who work for Raspberry Pi.
A small number of the original Pi staff (primarily Eben Upton) are former Broadcom employees who maintain a good relationship with Broadcom because it's good sense to remain friendly with the source of all your chips. Notably Eben is not an employee of Broadcom any more. He used to be both but hasn't for a couple of years.
The Raspberry Pi foundation is a charity that is not controlled by Broadcom. Broadcom are merely a key supplier.
Pico is based on two ARM Cortex M0+ CPUs.
Gun/gunning for is a term of phrase that means that one is trying to win/unseat another in a competitive sense.
“Guns” is a verb in the title, not a noun.
12C and 12S - two of my favorite buses!
Are those things really retyped by hand?
If you were designing a chip to go into a high-end-ish product, would basing it on POWER cause you any greater difficulty than RISC-V?
tl;dr the dual core processor is quite slow, but relatively stable running the software that can compile for it so far in Linux.
It seems like Vision Five is at least pushing things forward a bit on the software side, unlike some of the other hardware manufacturers of SBCs.
people do not like that believe it or not. its not fun having the USA hold your country hostage because you do not have alternatives. ARM is the same so RISC-V is a good contender to get behind for entire nations because they can fall back on this and besides, if there is no monopoly of x86/arm in the first place because RISC-v or some other architecture is common, the american armtwisting is reduced as the attack surface would be smaller.
china, russia, iran, india can develop their own thing, separate or together but not dependent on american generosity that can turn hostile, as it has in the past