I don't like RISC-V unless it has a good GPU
That said, the actual processor cores in this SBC seem to max out at 256 bit registers, which does not seem to be a lot.
This results in a higher performance per Watt, but doesn't scale well to higher-power applications.
For example, on the CPU one may pin all cores to stream a USB camera or software decode h264. With the SoC GPU decoding or streaming with the v4l2 interface might take up 30% on one core (mainly to handle the network traffic.)
The Raspberry Pi are not the fastest or "best" option (most focus on h264 or MJPEG hardware codecs), but the software/kernel ecosystem provides real value. Also, the foundation doesn't EOL their hardware often, or abandon software support after a single OS release.
A cheap RISC-V SBC is great, but ISA versions are generally so fractured (copied the worst ideas of ARM6)... few OS will likely waste resources targeting a platform that will have 5 variants a year, and proprietary drivers.
A Standard doesn't even need to be good, but must be consistent to succeed. =3
I wouldn't say "never", but a clone is highly unlikely for another decade or so. =3
A patent is an alternative to a trade secret. You can't eat your cake and still have it.
Some groups have attempted open IP cores, and made some progress:
However, the effort involved in getting standards compliant ASIC built puts folks in a Fabless manufacturing sector. Most firms that survive, will choose to stay with a generic FPGA option to avoid custom silicon unless absolutely necessary.
Patents are often useless/vague in many places, but on occasion may prevent platform decay for a few years. One can be sure a unique/new design will not go to fab unless such protection is in place. =3
Publish the software that does this for free so that more customers come to you instead of using FPGAs or just not making the attempt. Make it easier to design new chips so that more people do it and you get more customers.
People have tried, but helping other competitors for free rapidly decays the market. =3
Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCWDzWG1BcI
Many incentives to push technology forwards are high-risk/expensive investments, and expecting the public/customers to willingly help pay that cost is naive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cru2bkqwSYk
I assure you academic funding does not cover such large costs, government grants are only a fraction of expected taxes in late stage Technology Readiness Levels, and competitor/cloner fractured markets erode fiscal returns needed to pay for the total incurred project cost.
Apple makes minimal utility products, but relies on intangible branding to maintain perceived value. Thus, only Apple could get away with selling zero chip designer handbags, and would still make absurd revenue (not a real product yet.) Steve Jobs observed very early, that selling raw motherboards was a low margin business. Which it was why the company shifted into consumer products.
For almost every other brand, consumers have shown they prefer the near material cost in opportunistic China/India factories, and thus simply ignore most firms products that include 10 years of R&D costs to pay back the investors.
There are many shelved technologies that will never see a Patent or the public markets. This is because the conditions are not ready for advanced products yet, and competitors irrationally nurture the lowest value volume market sectors. Thus, everyone gets a 15% value boost at regular intervals, and people remain excited about 3 decade old technology.
Qualcomm cellular chip product lines essentially lived off iPhone sales. Like any loyal dog, they will unlikely bite the hand that feeds them...
Rule #3: popularity is not an indication of utility.
Have a wonderful day =3
And there have been some others as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_...
Recently https://www.furygpu.com/
Part of the problem is that every ASIC manufacturer (and indeed each fabrication process) has a different toolchain with a different set of primitives for circuit design. Yosys and other open tooling for FPGAs has helped a great deal in lowering the barrier to chip design and by association reuse of circuits. But every ASIC, at the moment, is tied to some vendor's PDK. Here's the one Google open sourced for Cypress Semi's SKY130 process node: https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk
This Orange Pi RV2 has a small vector unit in each core, and could be used for at least prototyping the software until more powerful chips are available.
BTW. There have also been a couple hardware startups that have been working on commercial GPUs based on RISC-V's vector extension, with their own GPU-specific instruction set extensions for texture lookup and the like.
RISC-V has a fragmented ISA standard, and every version is a magical unicorn part (the worst facet of ARM6.)
A Standard doesn't need to be good, but must be consistent to succeed. =3