This RISC-V cyberdeck is not for you
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- čas přidán 23. 07. 2024
- It's the first RISC-V cyberdeck-but most people shouldn't buy it.
Thanks to Sipeed for sending this Lichee Console 4A for testing. You can find it and their other Lichee 4A RISC-V hardware here: sipeed.com/licheepi4a
Other resources mentioned in this video:
- All my test data: github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-re...
- Blog post: www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/202...
- Intel N100 netbook: www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
Support me on Patreon: / geerlingguy
Sponsor me on GitHub: github.com/sponsors/geerlingguy
Merch: redshirtjeff.com
2nd Channel: / geerlingengineering
Contents:
00:00 - It's not for you
01:18 - Hardware overview
02:08 - It went a little sideways...
04:10 - Quirks
05:32 - RISC-V TH1520 Performance
08:19 - With great interest - Věda a technologie
I really like that you add proper subtitles to your videos, it's a nice touch
I too am very pro-subtitle. TY Mr. Geerling.
The fact that a RISC V chip is running a desktop environment and a chromium based browser is really promising. I am really getting excited to get real usable phones and laptops using RISC V.
Im a layman, whats the appeal to RISC V for those purposes
@@bingus549RISC-V is an open standard. It isn't closed down proprietary garbage like all other CPU instruction sets.
@@Nov1706 it is also (supposedly) way more efficient, or at least has the possibility of being way more efficient, than even ARM
@@bingus549 it's open source, which should decrease their price significantly over ARM and x86. It's very modular which means SOCs can have a lot of accelerators. Development on it would definitely be better as it's an open platform. Finally it also should be more efficient than ARM.
@@Nov1706 RiscV may be an open ISA, but that doesn't make it inherently better, or indeed ultimately cheaper to buy or lease chip designs. The ISA is free to use, but companies designing actual CPUs around that ISA can charge what they like for their designs. Calling other ISAs "garbage" because they are proprietary is ridiculous. Performance, efficiency, price and availability are what sells chips, plus the availability of good documentation, professional support and suitable development tools. Despite what you think, licensing the ISA is only a small part of the overall cost of designing and manufacturing CPUs.
Wife: "Why'd you buy that?"
Me: "Jeff Geerling said it wasn't for me!"
Wife: "What will you do with it?"
Me: "Donate it to Goodwill two years from now!"
It'll probably be more usable in 2 years
ahh yes, tale as old, probably even older than the G-book
Wife: I want some new clothes, shoes, and I need to get my hair done lol
Would feel bad for a grandmother buying this lol
🙏
If they wanted it to boot sideways (the display is already sideways, so, horizontal), all they have to do is add a boot param to Grub: fbcon=rotate:(INT)
Where INT can be:
0 - Normal rotation
1 - Rotate clockwise
2 - Rotate upside down
3 - Rotate counter-clockwise
It would be helpful if you wrote to them
Nerd alert
@@petermuller161in a RISC-V video? say it isn't so!
I think it probably doesnt use Grub as a bootloader. And this param is not for a bootloader, but for a kernel, which in most cases is passed to "him".
No GRUB on RISC-V; just uboot and other minimal BLs. :)
I used a netbook in graduate school. It would be awesome if they made a comeback.
as someone who used them in primary school, i do not wish to return to that era of plastic or performance, but a modern netbook? hell yeah.
translation: middle school
I recently got myself a used GPD Win Max 2 and that feels like the right mix of netbook size to power.
My first bought laptop was a Lenovo S10-3 around Christmas of 2008 or 2009 or so.
I loved it, sadly the hinge broke and when I left it at my mom's home, she thought it was broken and got rid of it :(
Not that I could do much with its 32bit Atom CPU now anyway but you know, I really liked that form factor.
@@xymaryai8283 That's not a fair comparison to be honest, the school units had the minimum memory required and always had the slowest storage available. not to mention the processors usually was the lower cache models as well.
GPD mini 3 is also an option or a used mini 1/2
I have a commodore c64. It also suffers from being bad at almost everything. But I still love it. I can hold it and say, "I remember back in the day......"
That is why I still want this thing.
it was really good for the time compared to what ibm was making at the time
@@belstar1128It was good in some areas, but not great in others. The colour pallete was dire, and whilst SID was very flexible, it only had 3 channels. The sub 1MHz CPU, the incredibly slow I/O and the unforgivable lack of graphics and sound commands in the supplied BASIC weren't great either. What made it incredibly popular was the aggressive pricing that Jack Tramiel unleashed, causing a price war, plus it was in production for over a decade, still being sold despite being obsolete.
@@another3997 yeah but the competition had 4 colors and no sound
*laughs in Sinclair Spectrum*
@@another3997I'd say, as someone born post-commedore, I think it's strength came in the combination of user accessibility (price and easy hardware manipulation), and unique hardware (like the SID). IBM seemed relatively locked down, and didn't encourage experimenting. Although the C64 kinda needed it...But hey, the Elite looked beautiful on it.
I had to reboot my microwave to get it working this morning :/ Trying to use it, the timer counted down the seconds but the spinny thing inside and magnetron didn't work. Turned it off at the wall, back on again, and it was fine.
Ah, don't you love it how even the simplest appliances are probably running some code that wasn't well-tested and now requires reboots or the 'IT love tap' to get them working again? :D
Sometimes I have to unplug the microwave to get it to stop beeping.
It's probably a safety feature. Your spinner likely has a worn tooth in the geartrain, or belt. The magnetron checks for the platform spinning; if it's not working, it won't turn on. Next time, try to manually spin it. Just an inch of rotation will likely get you past the worn part, and it should work normally.
i have to reboot my washing machine 😂😂😂
The door interlock on ours is a bit worn and does this - a hardware rather than firmware issue. We're at the point of automatically giving the door a wiggle each time we press the go button and it is ok then.
Let's not start calling small, netbook sized laptops "cyberdecks". Cyberdecks are cobbled together home made nerd-ware.
This basically is. Not a laptop for use
If you knew how to manufacture this you wouldn't have this opinion
Wasn't the original concept of a cyberdeck just a laptop lmao
To be fair, we should consider the name of the thing when judging its usefulness. It’s called „console“ and I‘d assume that it works perfectly fine for that usecase: ssh into a headless server.
yes, that would be the main use for a cyberdeck-style device, though i can imagine some other specific scenarios where a little computer like this would be useful or even crucial to have. Cyberdecks in general are not for everyone.
I'm glad it exists. Thanks for showing it off Jeff!
I'm a developer and I am interested in experimenting with RISC-V. As a free software enthusiast, I think RISC-V is the future of computing because it's a radically open platform free of any proprietary blobs like Intel ME or AMD PSP. I believe individuals should have total control over their hardware, and RISC-V could deliver that. But I'm not going to purchase this because I just don't have the money or the need for it at the moment. Still, very promising, I'm very happy to see some real desktop applications running on RISC-V and in a few years, I think there will be a RISC-V device for me.
I mean, there's absolutely no reason why RISC-V CPUs can't have stuff similar to Intel ME.
RISC-V mught make that situation better indirectly by introducing more competition to the market (incentivising OEMs to listen to 'niche' needs such as privacy and openness), but actual RISC-V processor designs can absolutely be closed and can include all sorts of custom additions.
How would it leverage AI and LLMs?
@@valkhorn Well at this point I don't see how since it is a general purpose CPU without any direct specific advantage there that I know of. But future cores or packages rather, could incorporate hardware specific to the type of computations used by for example LLM's like paralellized stream processors etc. A general purpose CPU core is roughly equivalent to any other for those purposes, what you really need is a massive amount of much simpler cores like you have in GPU's. Like your CUDA cores for example. Where you make a dent is when you have thousands of cores that can run the same calculation for the same problem but where one or more variables change, so you can evaluate the score of the outcome for millions of possible inputs and select the top score from them, if that makes sense. It's not something a traditional CPU is good at, regardless of it's microarchitecture or instruction set. The calculation is relatively speaking simple, but the variability of the inputs and thus outputs is far too great to precalculate it and use an n-dim matrix to simply use lookups. It could be done but the advantage isn't there since you'd have to recalculate every step anyway. Not sure if I'm making sense, but AI of the type like LLMs mostly would benefit from hardware that has a crazy amount of relatively simple cores since you in a sense 'brute force' approach every problem. There isn't a single 'correct' output that you can finess your way to, you throw everything at the computational wall, and pick what sticks the best.
I've commented on these little Lichee SoCs before on your videos, and once again, I'm glad to see it getting to the point where we can have full-build dev machines. I imagine in a half-a-decade's time, we'll see this sitting beside ARM in the low-end market where value-add comes from off-die peripherals within the SoC. Maybe in 10 years it'll be good enough to run a tablet or phone. Exciting times!
I ❤ Dark Mode even more when Jeff wears it
Where can I buy this shirt? I’ve found others similar in style, but this is nicer than any of the other designs.
My love of handheld Linux devices dates back to Sharp's Zaurus. Its actual utility was somewhat limited but just the fact that I could noodle on the command line with a PDA was tons of fun. So of course I bought into the Asus Eee PC line starting with the 701 and a couple of models afterwards. Great little machines.
Still using c3k
I had a Sharp Zaurus, which I liked, although it was useless as it was a development unit with only half the RAM of the final released version. Still have it, and it still boots the original Linux it came with.
32MB? 64MB? Enough for 2.6.24 + text console
Note. I somehow compiled gnat (ADA), and added ada to gcc, which I daily use on my pxa PDA. Gcc v4.1.2 is small enough to run more than decently.
As an old IT support engineer, I was drooling over that form factor as a data center server field support box... (and I personally luv "da' nubbin")... ;-)
Too bad that the guts and mechanical design quality seem to blow chunks...
And, the "old-school" question was always, "Will it play Crysis?" ;-P
True, but Doom is the better benchmark for the more wild hardware I touch-Crysis usually involves some sort of Windows-ish stuff, and that makes it an order of magnitude harder :)
This exact laptop with a Intel Celeron CPU and Windows 11 can be found on Aliexpress and Amazon for about $250-300. The only difference with this model seems to be the CPU swap and the kinda sloppy addition of a ethernet jack.
You can also find GPD even smaller than this which has a ton of ports including serial.
@@Atomhaz Yeah, the serial port is a real plus to get a console terminal connection on a UNIX server...
😂
You’re only interacting with the RISC-V ISA if you’re coding in assembly. Otherwise the experience is similar to running a semi-jank Linux on another system on a chip board like oDroid or Tinkerboard
Eh... in this case I didn't get into it in the video... but there's still a lot that doesn't easily work on here. I couldn't install Ansible because of some Python library incompatibilities, and some media tools wouldn't compile either and weren't available in package repos. So I basically had to give up running a few tools that I can build on Arm or x86
@@JeffGeerling Doesn't Box64 run on RISC-V? Could try it even if it would be comically slow.
Used to have a Dell Mini 9 that i really liked, wish they'd respin a modern version of that.
We need more palmtops like this again. PLEASE. If you can make gaming handhelds, you sure as hell can make tiny laptops too.
China's ban on AMD and Intel for some of the Chinese government contracts will give a big rise to a lot RISC-V chips coming out of China
I want this for devkit purposes. I would love to see if any of my projects would run on RISC-V…
I would say, if you have the money, you can take the RISC.
Which projects?
Might want to look up the milkV oasis
As someone wanting to move more towards open firmware and ideally hardware... its really good to see this.
I saw this a while ago, I'm glad you made a video on it !!!
What about the devterm or uconsole from clockworkpi? Both of those have options for risc processors when you purchase them.
Always nice to hear about RISC V stuff!
Looks like it shipped with xfce? Whatever distro they adapted for this, I would have preferred something like Sway for an effectively no-mouse UI, and it would feel faster, and be possible to get more use out of the touchscreen.
Twm or nanoX, or no x11 at all.
I, too, love my little netbook. It is still going... well not strong, the battery in it is hard dying, charge can go from 70% down to single digits in an instant. Yeah.
I'm glad to see RISC-V going places though, the more the better so it can get tested for various form factors.
Still a long way to go for it to be competitive with other architectures. At the rate it is going, we may very well see the very first cases of optical computing coming out of the labs with some recent advances in that arena.
Computing hardware in general is at an exciting time right now. Kinda wish I went down that route, but I went the software direction.
God bless.
You should replace the battery, assuming you need the portability.
@@elu9780 I might do eventually, and at least sell it on to a new home, or maybe give it to my nephew when he is older, throw some games and educational stuff on it for him.
I'm intent on making my own DIY tablet to replace my current Android tablet, the netbook, and e-reader all in one. Folding dual-screen one, color one side, e-ink the other.
My project for the year now. Going to be fun to make.
@@elu9780at least you can do that with older hardware.
Could the little pokey hole be a battery reset ?
Lenovo has those on their thinkpads underside, since the battery is now not removable
and when you need to do a complete REAL power off/reboot you can't disconnect the battery anymore.. which i had to.
Looking forward to the roll-out of 3:21 as your official channel watermark!
I don't care i want it. Ive been waiting for the risc-v cpu module for my MNT reform forever!
I used an Eee PC in college too. The screen size was terrible, but I swapped in an aftermarket battery and could get 6-8 hours of runtime, enough to carry it in my backpack all day without the charger
I loved my eee to. You'd love your input on a good modern eee replacement.
What if all I need is an ssh terminal because I have to log in somewhere while on the road? This sounds like a better option than a tablet.
Somewhat-see the keyboard discussion... it can be a bit painful to use the punctuation on this layout. If you use it enough, you can probably train your fingers to hit the period, forward slash, and apostrophe okay, but even with decent use for a couple weeks, I still can't hit those three keys all the time.
A couple placements were odd at first (like Tab and Backspace), but I got used to them.
Honestly the other tiny laptops that were mentioned would be way better in terms of efficiency. (I wonder if there are any AMD ones because power efficiency)
That would be really nice though. I currently use A-Shell on my phone when I need to ssh into my server wihtout pulling out my entire laptop and that is a chore.
honestly a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard and termux would probably be a better option. especially with battery life
That's what I use my 9-inch EeePC for. It's really not powerful enough for much else, barely browsing on its own nowadays. Then again, I have a much more versatile Thinkpad, and since I can just as well run SSH from that, the Eee doesn't get much use any more.
Better a portable, larger screen, A nice keyboard, and a cheap pi SBC or the pi400. I saw a nice mod where they put a mechanical keyboard on the 400
It may not be very good, but the form factor is good, and hopefully it will lead the way to a fully open platform existing in the future. Can you imagine how awesome it would be if every chip and board that went into the computer you're using was open?
that would be such a cool time period to exist in.
Check out the MNT Pocket Reform. Hopefully they start shipping soon. It's more expensive, but it's a completely open platform, down to every part but maybe the base silicon for some of the chips a small company just can't make!
@@JeffGeerling The problem with things like the MNT Reform - and I have a lot of respect for MNT - is that they provide weird keyboards that don't have a space bar and even try and pitch that as an advantage.
There's another open hardware laptop - the Balthazar Personal Computing Device - that has a similarly undesirable keyboard (and also happens to use RISC-V). I mean, space bar technology is not rocket science, but people try and reinvent the most mundane things in the least practical ways for no really good reason.
So this device, by using something that is probably an off-the-shelf part, is actually doing the right thing: focusing on the elements where they can differentiate sensibly, as opposed to trying to reinvent everything poorly.
I have a Lichee Pi 4A (with the same SoC as this console), and one thing that’s interesting about the SoC is the integrated 4 TOPS NPU. That’s enough for doing, say, object recognition on a surveillance feed. There’s a few examples on the wiki, so it’s not an undocumented gimmick like in other SBCs.
It's important to note I think that this "laptop" is basically a laptop shell on a Lichee Pi LM4A which is roughly a RISC-V equivalent of a Raspberry Pi Compute Module. As you rightly pointed out, it's far from an actual laptop.
Where can I buy it?
Always a fun time when the screws come pre-stripped
What site did you use to test the webcam?
Where i can buy?
Hi Jeff ,Whats your thoughts on building a SHTF cyber deck, maybe a video on this matter??
And risc v should fix some ARM problems or what the benefit?
this is the only mini laptop I've seen this size with a camera.
Honestly a big selling point, fun laptop, but with a camera for interviews.
Unfortunately needs an external mic; and I couldn't get Bluetooth working either. I don't think the headphone jack has an input.
I was very surprised that this cyberdeck runs SuperTux Kart in a decent way. Years ago, this was my benchmark when I was going to test a Linux distribution on my laptops.
And it's still fun today :)
I also have fond memories of those tiny netbooks, running eeedora of course ;)
Where did you get the Dark Mode shirt?
Techno Tim! He just released some 'dark mode' stuff, it's a comfy shirt.
The "shell" (incl. screen etc) is basically "off-the-shelf".
I have a similar looking unit (w/o an Ethernet port) that I bought a year ago.
It has a Intel Celeron J4105, 12GB of RAM, 120GB SSD.
It's decent unit, for a "laptop" that portable, but it has its quirks.
It came with Win11 (unlicensed, but with custom drivers. I've since bought a license), and I've also installed Ubuntu (tried some other distros, but Ubuntu had the least issues).
The "little red riding hood mouse" (as the listing calls it) is fine, but the "mouse buttons" are stupid, they are basically just keys: left is "keycode 84"/0xffb5 (according to xev, produces a 5, works as a lclick in Win), and right is the "[context] menu" key (incl. in Win), meaning that you can't "right click" on anything (and no left click in Ubuntu).
And of course, I had to change the orientation of the screen. (I also haven't gotten sound to work in Ubuntu)
For the N100 notebook that you linked, how is Linux support on it?
That's a good question; I haven't tried it, so I'm not sure.
@@JeffGeerling yea, laptops are also the annoying ones. Don't deny I am pretty excited to get an i3-N305 laptop but it seems like many vendors like Lenovo aren't interested in making one (without it being horribly feeling) with only 8GB RAM
Fitting in the cargo pants is a power move Jeff, love it!!!
it's pretty cool that jute ube already works on RISCV
Where is backslash on that keyboard?
Jeff, thanks for the sharing. Fair comments on the risc-v performance. However, as the manufacture already mentioned that this is a developer machine and not an end user machine. I would like to see you have some contents related to software development. i.e. What os it can be run on? What tool chain it is using? Or maybe download something from git and build the software so as to show us how long does it compiles. etc
I have a small urge to get one and overclock it. Small, but it is there. Though I can be patient and wait for the other devices to release first and for some more software improvements to land in various things.
What happend when they combine an existing arm design chip with the risc-v Isa? Lets say the design of a snapdragon x combine with the riscv Isa.
That looks exactly like the mini-laptop I got only thing missing is the ethernet port and its running a Intel celeron with windows 10
The cargo pants! Those are perfect for this laptop, awesome! :D
They still fit from college days too lol
Where can I get that t-shirt??
I bought it from Techno Tim! He just released that shirt (and some other merch with the same graphic). Very comfy.
Thanks for testing these small footprint machines, Jeff!
Sure RISC-V isn't there yet - especially if we have to buy machines from Aliexpress which perform similar to a RPi 3 - but I really love that small form factor and I think it could be a cool gadget in certain scenarios too :D
Also the cheap keyboard has a ThinkPad TrackPoint, that makes bonus points on my list! Just good you didn't try to play Doom using these super small arrow keys.
It's a cute thing for recreational coding. I have a special place for my 10'' notebook from 2009, besides the cheap screen, that thing was perfect for coding on the go.
Grabbing one of those intels, thanks for the link!
Great review. I do appreciate the comparison with R'Pi and ARM in general. Am I buying one? No, but I'm thinking about that N100...
If you want to run Linux don't get one. The display does not work. There is an issue open on the freedesktop gitlab "screen not working on Intel N100 Alder Lake" should help you find it.
It is funny, I just watched a video about the C920 RISC-V CPU today (Milk-V Pioneer system).
If I am not wrong the new C930 which according to Milk-V is planned for Q1 2024 will have full Vector support.
On the other hand the verilog files for the C910 are available on github, but sadly not for the C920...
Would that on the side be a rest button LoL
So, I've actually got one of those P8 aliexpress netbooks he shows. It's very nice and has a great size (wanted something to go in my small camera bag). The problem is there is actually a bug on Linux where the internal display won't work on boot. There is work being done and I tried to post a link but it looks like my comment got removed. Wanted to post it here to shine a light on the driver issue plaguing the P8 N100 machine.
I like the P8 (I may get the RISC-V unit just to contribute there as well). I also find it odd that this unit and the P8 have some of the same quirks. Charging seems unreliable on USBC when completely off (will only work with some chargers while off but seems to work with everything while on). Power button must be held for 5 seconds to turn on. Display is wired for portrait mode layouts. Also, the keyboard is very similar.
Since the link isn't posting, you may use the following as a search term:
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* hback porch < 16 pixels - Internal 800x1280 screen not working on Intel N100 Alder Lake based notebook (DSI) in KMS
I'm not planning on buying one but I hope it has better documentation than the Pine64 Star64 board where half the time I'm trying to look up something about it I wish I'd bought the StarFive VisionFive 2 board instead which is what is linked to in a lot of cases without any clarification of how much of that applies to the Star64 board.
Can it run emacs??
Very cool machine even if it's not the most powerful. It's not the answer to Risc V computing but it's definitely a step in the right direction.
It's fun in the early cycles of product development seeing how they'll play with different form factors. Even if one or two of them don't work out or don't generate enough sales, it's good to keep engineers working on more fun designs than just the standard 'expected' designs!
@@JeffGeerlingtrue you have to look at it as more of a proof of concept then a full fledged PC. Would be interesting to see what different OS you could get running on it to see if you could expand the software library.
The bit I wonder is how much better that chip will run with further code and compiler optimisations for RiscV - something we are still seeing improvements in now with Arm as a desktop platform.
I'd not want to stake money on it, but I'd not be surprised if it will become a perfectly good RiscV netbook eventually.
@@foldionepapyrus3441 that could be a good set of tests to run it thru as well. 👍
@@rmcdudmk212 Linux, Linux, and then also Linux. Oh, and don't forget Linux.
I picked it up a couple of months ago, and I get a lot of compliments on it...for some reason. It's a bit disheartening to have to tell people "It's not worth the price at the performance", but I know why I got it, and I enjoy it!
Performance wise, I've been comparing it to late 2000s computers (similar boot times, and "hardware" grunt). The touch screen..works, the nub brings me pain, but, surprisingly, I like the keyboard. Can't type with it normally very well, but it fits in my hands pretty well and my thumbs can reach anywhere (just gotta break the habit of using solely the left shift, lol). It also struggles with software compatibility, but running with Linux typically I have gotten use to that...
Over all, it's a fun little device that I can't recomend to anyone, but I will be playing with for years to come (especially since the risc-v module is replaceable).
Thanks JeffI thought your Red shirt counterpart was being a bit too optimistic when he showed two thumbs up…by the way did he get them reattached?
I almost bought the Pine64 PineTab for $220 on their sight, but lack of community support put me off. Although in another 5 years hopefully that will change.
Thanks for the information and always great videos.
Have a great day!
I want one. I ❤❤❤❤ RISC-V
Thanks for the video
So too RISC-V or not RISC-V enough? Reminds me of libretto with about the same utility factor.
Can it run HaikuOS?
This chassis or similar is being used by lots of cheap tiny laptops. Theres loads of cheap x86 versions.
If it had a serial port, it would be handy little terminal.
Whats the battery like on it? I suspect its pretty bad based on flops/watt score.
I just got their new full laptop I turned it on and logged in,based on this little one. Will play around with it... Haven't yet...
So what's the benefit of RISC-V over x86 or ARM?
1:30 Maybe that hole is a reset switch like on tablets/smartphones?
They had a couple pushbuttons inside the M.2 slot port, so I don't know-I didn't want to jab any sharp object in there :)
When is faster chips coming?
i wish more pc manufacturers would make that form factor! the only really compelling mini laptop (with typeable keys) is the gpd win max 2. all the 13-17" laptops are too big imo; keep the devices small and if you want a big screen, just line out into an external monitor.
I'm looking at their RISC-V Android tablet dev kit. Slow AF is fine for testing my Android platform work, and should remind me quickly when my library is doing too much work.
If it had consistently been in that slot between the RPI-4 and RPI-5 or even sitting at the RPI-5 level through all of the capabilities it would have been a very popular device, especially amongst the amateur radio community running digital modes.
The Lychee RV Dock with Allwinner D1 is a cute little toy. I like the package and don't regret playing with it. Hardinfo said it was equivalent of PentiumM(R) so 1990s processor.
Will you make some fatality video with it? You should do it again. It was so a bright and inteligent idea to perform fatality on a pc.
Reminded me for the Toshiba Libretto
I'm still very excited for the future of RISC-V if you look at the speed which development is being adopted and the change in performance year-by-year it's technically improving faster than both ARM and X86 have in the past 10 years within just 4.
This is why I'm particularly dubious of people who like to fence sit and say "no no no, it's still at least over a decade or two out". Less than 5 years ago it was a non-consideration; something you found once on a wikipedia rabbit hole and literally never thought about again. Now we're already seeing some pretty competent desktop dev boxes, box64 can run some x86_64 applications, and it's a decently popular topic for techies to at least know about in passing.
I mean the original BTC whitepaper was released in 2008, and a decade and a half later basically everyone knows roughly what BTC is and it's become a topic of serious political discourse on a national scale. Granted I wish most of the people partaking in that "serious political discourse" had a bit of a less rough understanding of it, but the point is in a decade and a half it went from absolute inception of radically new concept with zero institutional backing released anonymously, to international scale influence. Meanwhile Risc-V has quite a lot of backing, is in an excellent position due to governments doing government shit, is developing at a breakneck pace, has a good few technical advantages to it's credit, and is already seeing some niche real-world adoption.
If Risc-V today is even roughly comparable to BTC just 5 or so years after it's initial inception, I'd find it really hard to buy we're still more than a decade out from massive waves being made.
The main reason a developer would get this would be Operating System development, specifically ensuring that things run well on a fully integrated system. Part of the issue for power optimisation is we don't have decades of research that's directly applicable for the most efficient cores. Hell, most RISC-V chips are built on decades old 128-32nm tech that simply can't compete in terms of power efficiency but it massively brings the cost down while working out the kinks. As a kernel development machine I can see this being fairly popular as a development platform that isn't just a bare board.
Would be cool to see some content about IBM Power which runs a form of RISC
Have you seen this Friendly ELEC CM3588 NAS?
This keyboard and the sideways booting is familiar from my GPD Pocket 1
When you hold the laptop in your palm it looks like it IS your hand. Like your arm ends with a laptop attachment. Cyber indeed.
I don't know why, but the design form factor appeals to me.
It'd only be better if the bottom of the display slid forward until it was flat, making it basically a chonky tablet with a slide out keyboard
Very nice little devkit! It was amusing to see it run DOOM. :)
But can it run Crysis?
...no, not at this time :D
@@JeffGeerling I dare you to get "Undertale" running on it. 😅
@@Praxibetel-Ix It does run (Tyr)Quake.
Review the Milk-V pioneer box!! A full risc5 pc, ltt had a look at it not too long ago
I had an HP Mini 311 for my college days (well some of them, my first laptop for College was an IBM ThinkPad x23 (I think... it's been a while) ). The HP uses an Atom N270 processor, 3 GB of RAM and a slow spinning hard drive. It was very very slow. But it ran Power Point and that was the whole reason for it.
I wonder how feasible a Core i3-N305 notebook in this format would be, considering it can be configured down to a 9W TDP and has 8 cores instead of 4.
Love the fact that you also loved your eeePC and don’t know why - that was the magic of those eeePCs 😅😂
Netbooks are still a thing?
from the benchmarks.. somethings up with the bus. Look at the multicore. Its not much better than single core. Does it have no cache?
GPD Win MAX 2 has the smallest "full" keyboard I find easy enough to adapt to in normal typing despite being condensed relative to normal key spacing.
Power VR? Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long long time.
The gpu part was unexpected to have here I wonder how this behaves with emulation.
Wish you had talked about the operating system. Didn’t even mention what exactly it was. Would be interested to know the state of risc V compatible operating systems
This was running Debian 12 Bookworm on the 5.10 kernel compiled for RISC-V. There are a few other distros with some support, but I tend to stick to the distro that comes with the board, because the vendors usually have a lot of band-aids included to make sure their hardware works better.
Right now Sipeed even advises not running apt upgrade, because doing so could upgrade some packages that break things on the Lichee Console 4A!
@@JeffGeerling makes it a sitting target for malware that is discovered that exploits flaws in any of the packages that come with it.
I hope at the very least there are security updates, and that I can alter the config to only apply those...
and if course that they are tested and mended if they are broken in this platform.