Sophgo sells some: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/milk-v-offers-a-trio-of-ri...
When I seen this Milk-V Pioneer platform I was very enthusiastic: looks like what I need (minus IPMI, but I can omit this requirement) - one slot for 10G network, one slot for HBA, M.2 slots for caches, I can select RAM (in opposite to most of these platforms, where RAM is soledrid-on), plus ability to experiment with new platform. Looks perfect.
But... $1499?! Plus VAT to import to Europe?!
Sorry. I pass :-(
Why does it cost SO MUCH!?
On other hand... There is NO comparable production RISC-V platforms. You say "It has 64 cores" - well, it is good argument when there is choice. But there is no choice on RISC-V side, there is no such platform with 32 or 8 or any other number of cores. So, I compare what I can buy with "RISC-V" badge and what I can buy with "amd64" badge. When I choose EPYC I could choose from 8 cores up to 64 cores, according to my wallet and needs. For 1000 euro I could have good, proven MoBo which offers more than this "development platform" (i.e. IPMI and VGA exit, which means I don't need any videocard to occupy so precious PCIe slot - and I think, it is good idea for DEVELOPMENT platform to have full remote control & access, IPMI or some other) and 8 core/16 threads first generation EPYC (which will be faster core-to-core, I'm sure), NEW. If I agree to buy second-hand hardware it will be about 550 euros (same mobo, same CPU). For 1400 euros I will get NEW 16 cores / 32 thread EPYC + mobo combo, or about 700 euros second-hand.
Yes, I know, development vs. production, but this situation stays the same for years now.
BTW, situation is the same with ARM platforms too - there is no way to buy "big desktop/small-server class" ARMv8 board with good set of expansion slot.
Sure, it's 4 times the performance, but it's also going to be several times the price.
Even a prebuilt 7950X (16 core) machine costs more than the Pioneer, at leas the ones I've found on the net.
I'm already own good chassis, HBA, 10G network adapter and lot of HDDs :-)
Except I really don't think it's fair to call RISC-V 12 (or 13) years old. Sure, that's when some university guys in a pub said "fuck it, we should just make our own ISA" and started throwing ideas around, but it was a long long time before it was frozen and there was something companies could start building on.
That happened in July 2019. just over 4 years ago, which I think should be counted as the zero date.
When did Arm start working on Aarch64? I don't think we have any idea — as far as I know they've never said. My guess is it was around the 2003 release of AMD64. But the world learned about it when they published the finished ARMv8-A spec in October 2011.
If 2011 is the date for ARMv8 then the fair comparable date for RISC-V is 2019.
> only been making chips for 5 years
Five years ago, the only RISC-V chips were one-off ones made in Berkeley university, and the FE310-G000 and FU540-C000, which were also made by those same guys as were in that pub, manufactured in total volumes of a few hundred, and with no guarantee they would be compatible with the eventual ratified standard.
With the HiFive Unleashed SiFive "shipped a draft spec", which is exactly the same thing they shit on Canaan (K210, priv arch 1.9.1, literally a snapshot of the Rocket repo) and THead (C906/C910 RVV 0.7.1) for. They just got lucky that no breaking changes were made, unlike the other guys.
It's the same for the Talos II using IBM's POWER. It costs a lot because a) it is designed as a workstation and b) the volume just isn't there.
Economies of scale basically.
Obviously DigiKey doesn't have the chipset ICs, but at quantities of 100 just the connectors, VRMs, passives and the big 8-layer PCB to house it was so much higher.
Like I knew it would be higher, but this exercise really put industrialized manufacturing and economy of scale into perspective.
Because it is their first generation chip, thus small production run.
You can either wait for the next one (SOPHON SG2044, with V 1.0 extension, TBA 2024) or get something that's mass-produced now, such as SBCs or tablets based on the JH7110 or TH1520 SoCs.