Star64 RISC-V Single-Board PC Launches April 4 for $70 and Up (pine64.org) 26
PINE64 has an update about their Star64 single-board computer with a quad-core RISC-V processor: it will be available on April 4th in two configurations: 4GB and 8GB LPDDR4 memory for $69.99 and $89.99:
Let me just quickly reiterate the Star64 features:
- Quad core 64bit RISC-V
- HDMI video output
- 4x DSI and 4x CSI lates
- i2c touch panel connector
- dual Gigabit Ethernet ports
- dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth
- 1x native USB3.0 port, 3x shared USB2.0 ports
- PCIe x1 open-ended slot and GPIO bus pins (i2c, SPI and UART).
- The board also features 128M QSPI flash and eMMC and microSD card slots.
The board will be available in two different RAM configurations — with 4GB and 8GB LPDDR4 memory for $69.99 and $89.99 respectively. The Star64 store page ought to already be live when you read this, but will be listed as out of stock until the 4th.
Liliputing offers this summary: The Star64 is a single-board computer with a quad-core RISC-V processor, support for up to 8GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage (as well as a microSD card reader). Developed by the folks at Pine64, it's designed to be an affordable platform for developers and hobbyists looking to get started with RISC-V architecture. Pine64 first announced it was working on the Star64 last summer...
Meanwhile, PINE64's Linux tablets, the PineTab2 and PineTab-V, will launch one week later on Tuesday, April 11th.
Other highlights from this month's community update: there's now a dedicated Debian with GNOME image with tailored settings for grayscale for their Linux-based "PineNote" e-ink tablets. ("Other OSes and desktop environments are being worked on too.")
And the update also includes photos of one user's cool 3D-printed replacement cases for their PinePhone featuring Tux the penguin.
- Quad core 64bit RISC-V
- HDMI video output
- 4x DSI and 4x CSI lates
- i2c touch panel connector
- dual Gigabit Ethernet ports
- dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth
- 1x native USB3.0 port, 3x shared USB2.0 ports
- PCIe x1 open-ended slot and GPIO bus pins (i2c, SPI and UART).
- The board also features 128M QSPI flash and eMMC and microSD card slots.
The board will be available in two different RAM configurations — with 4GB and 8GB LPDDR4 memory for $69.99 and $89.99 respectively. The Star64 store page ought to already be live when you read this, but will be listed as out of stock until the 4th.
Liliputing offers this summary: The Star64 is a single-board computer with a quad-core RISC-V processor, support for up to 8GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage (as well as a microSD card reader). Developed by the folks at Pine64, it's designed to be an affordable platform for developers and hobbyists looking to get started with RISC-V architecture. Pine64 first announced it was working on the Star64 last summer...
Meanwhile, PINE64's Linux tablets, the PineTab2 and PineTab-V, will launch one week later on Tuesday, April 11th.
Other highlights from this month's community update: there's now a dedicated Debian with GNOME image with tailored settings for grayscale for their Linux-based "PineNote" e-ink tablets. ("Other OSes and desktop environments are being worked on too.")
And the update also includes photos of one user's cool 3D-printed replacement cases for their PinePhone featuring Tux the penguin.
Benchmarks? (Score:2)
We need to see benchmarks. I wouldn't mind buying this, charity/gofundme style, to support RISC-V .. BUT .. I'd like them to be upfront about spec comparison to ARM cpus.
Re:Benchmarks? (Score:5, Informative)
From their wiki: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/S... [pine64.org] it says U74 1.5GHz. CPU Manufacturer https://www.sifive.com/cores/u... [sifive.com] says 4.27/3.32 DMIPS/MHz 5.75 CoreMark/MHz.
My basic speculations: assuming maximum frequency of 1500 MHz, it would mean CoreMark 8625. According to https://www.eembc.org/coremark... [eembc.org] this would compare to: Exynos 5250 ARM Cortex-A15 launched 2011 (CoreMark 9495). There are big differences though, the Exynos 5250 was dual core, while the U74 is quad core.
The HiFive U74 reference platform was benchmarked in 2021 https://www.phoronix.com/revie... [phoronix.com] and the Raspberry Pi 400 outperformed the SiFive HiFive Unmatched in all benchmark, by a factor roughly 1.5 to 4. At the time the reference U74 board was priced $665. It could have been upgraded in the meantime, we don't have the full component number to be sure.
Re: (Score:2)
I was wondering how this thing might work as a basic router. You could pair it with a switch with VLAN support, for example.
Looking at the specs I think it would struggle to perform well on fast connections. VLANs will be an issue if you need traffic going between them too.
Re:Benchmarks? (Score:4, Interesting)
Summary: If you are looking for performance, stick with ARM. This chip is not yet competitive with latest ARM designs. RiscV is still new and will take a while to evolve. Given ARM's huge head start, RiscV may never catch up. So again, if you're strictly concerned with performance, skip this and stay with ARM.
Having said that, are you aware that ARM just announced that they are changing their license model so that their royalty per CPU will be based on the cost of the device it is used in, rather than a straight "per CPU ARM license?" I doubt this will make a big change to SBC prices, as they are quite affordable. I think it's aimed more at the premium smartphone market, where ARM wants a bigger "piece of the action". This is part of ARM's ambition to go public soon.
My interest in this board is that RiscV is an open instruction set (which is not the same as open source, but still more free than fully proprietary), and most importantly - DUAL GIGABIT ETHERNETS AT A MODEST PRICE! I have been waiting years for a board like this.
Re: (Score:2)
RISC-V will catch up. The combination of the licensing pressures by ARM and Sanctions by the Americans on China mean that China (and Russia) will be looking *very* heavily into alternatives to the ARM/Intel architecture duopoly.
Although Apple somewhat astonishing M core chipsets have thrown a firecracker under the big players to pick up the pace and try and figure out how to answer that threat as non apple companies demand the ability to produce laptops with the energy to performance ratios that see
Cost more important? (Score:2)
We need to see benchmarks. I wouldn't mind buying this, charity/gofundme style, to support RISC-V .. BUT .. I'd like them to be upfront about spec comparison to ARM cpus.
Which ARM CPUs, those in a Raspberry Pi, a cellphone, or an Apple M2 based Mac?
Personally, I think cost is most important at this stage. The goal being becoming familiar with the architecture and providing a modesty priced working environment for people to start porting software to. Performance can wait for later.
Not all true (Score:1)
It's worth noting that this was an April Fool's announcement, and the PineTab-V seems to be parody rather than a real product, unlike the Pinetab2 and Star64. Though considering one of their jokes last year—the PineBuds—turned into a real product, who knows, maybe we will be getting a RISC-V tablet after all.
Now is the time (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
With The Raspberry Pi becoming unobtanium ...
I've been seeing RPi3 at the local microcenter for the last month. Weekly shipments lasting a few days.
Re: (Score:2)
With The Raspberry Pi becoming unobtanium ...
I've been seeing RPi3 at the local microcenter for the last month. Weekly shipments lasting a few days.
The 4's are still pretty hard to get. Either sold out or limited to one per person.They say the worldwide chip shortage is making it difficult to serve people.
I needed one quickly, while they where complaining that they had to sell to businesses instead of regular people. I ended up buying a le Potato. Came in like a day from Amazon. The Potato's don't have wifi, but I have a lot of adapters, and there was that turnaround time.
And I guess no worldwide chip shortages for them either ;^)
Full hardware support with a mainline kernel? (Score:2)
Will we be able to compile our own kernels for this RISC V hardware? Will standard, non-customized distros run on this board and support all the hardware including any GPU capabilities without binary blobs and forked libraries? Is the boot process easy to work with and can boot off of USB, SD card, or SSD?
Re:Full hardware support with a mainline kernel? (Score:5, Informative)
Not likely. RISC-V is just open-architecture. It means anyone who wants to design a RISC-V processor can.
But that doesn't include peripherals like memory and DMA controllers, bus controllers (PCIe, USB, etc), device controllers (SD/MMC, serial, GPIO, etc), GPUs, video accelerators, LCD controllers, etc.
All of those peripheral blocks can come from anywhere, and there's a rich source or IP block vendors like Synopsys and Cadence. GPU blocks are harder to get since most are closely tied to their host architectures, but Imagination Technologies sells GPU IP blocks still.
And the memory map is completely random - while the RISC-V has a standard boot method, It appears to boot from onboard ROM and RAM and capabilities of that code determine how the system will boot subsequent images.
If you want a standard system you need to define one - remember even the IBM PC was just another way of booting the x86 CPU until it got standardized later on - there were plenty of x86 computers that were not IBM PC compatible at all and many didn't even share the same architecture. There were even PCs that were "MS-DOS compatible" in that they could run any MS-DOS application using MS-DOS (and BIOS) APIs, but were not IBM PC compatible (e.g., the display controller was elsewhere), so running something that required IBM PC compatibility on an MS-DOS computer would often lock up the computer. But MS-DOS compatibility meant things like WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and other office applications ran on some very weird hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
As closed or open as any comparable ARM-based SBC - if you're expecting everything to work out of the box, wait a year.
"The releases are still in alpha state and are only fit for testing purposes."
There's another board based on the JH7110 from a rival vendor - VisionFive 2 which has a head start on development.
Re: (Score:3)
That's truly unfortunate as the situation with ARM and Linux is truly awful. One would hope that with RISC V being "open source" as it were, that it would be an ideal pairing with Linux. But alas RISC V is going to just end up being ARM with out the license fees, with the same poor Linux support. Don't get me wrong, Linux fully supports the ARM instruction set, just like it does (and will) support the RISC V instruction set. But to actually run on such systems, and support all the hardware and be in the
Re: (Score:2)
It might be worse. At least with ARM some of the peripherals have been either reverse engineered or are open, like the GPU cores designed by ARM themselves. Obviously ARM aren't going to want people pairing their IP with a RISC V core, so we have to start from scratch again.
Re: (Score:2)
That's truly unfortunate as the situation with ARM and Linux is truly awful.
As a console user I find nothing wrong with ARM on Linux.
For desktop use, its not the ARM. It's the missing drivers for other hardware. Ex Apple M1/M2.
The editors are lates (Score:2, Informative)
Lanes, lanes.
It has to be said (Score:3)
the Pine Note (Score:2)
Really looks like the large screen e-reader some have been waiting for. The Elipsa came close, but not quite. About a year from now maybe?
Don't know how large the market for them will be, but it seems like a perfect fit for a certain niche. Black and white print, plus audio (not video one assumes).
Its the reading and classical music listening niche. How big it is? We will see...
Re: (Score:2)
Many past e-ink displays have been trickable into doing low-grade video, but the performance is poor and it decreases display lifespan. Still, it can be handy for watching short illustrative animations.
Why? (Score:1)
Why bother capitalising "SPI" if you're not going to capitalise "i2c"?!
Re: (Score:2)
Why bother capitalising "SPI" if you're not going to capitalise "i2c"?!
Its probably an autocorrect thing :-)