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0 pointsgarmaine8y ago0 comments

I'm not sure there will be cheaper boards, to be honest. Just more fully functional ones with more peripheral types and added features I'm sure. This is a workstation-class CPU they are developing, not a RasPi competitor.

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qubex8y ago

I’m curious to know what leads you to consider the RISC-V to be a “workstation-class CPU”. As I understand it’s an ISA that aims to be pretty broad, and is expected to compete (at least initially) with low-end embedded MIPS chips that are pretty ubiquitous everywhere in all sorts of devices.

garmaineOP8y ago

I’m talking about U54 from SiFive specifically.

opencl8y ago

The U54 is squarely in the Pi competitor category. Claimed IPC is slightly lower at 1.7DMIPS/Mhz vs 2.3 for the Cortex-A53 in the Pi and this SoC clocks slightly higher than the Pi at 1.5Ghz vs 1.2Ghz, so performance should be quite similar. I certainly hope it manages to catch on and we get higher performance RISC-V chips at a reasonable cost in the future but these are clearly not it. If by "workstation class" you mean Skylake/Zen levels of performance there's a long way to go.

jabl8y ago

The U54 is a single-issue in-order core. Again, what makes you label that a "workstation-class core"?

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nickik8y ago

There are tons of other people who are working on RISC-V as well, LowRISC for example. The software should run everywhere.

garmaineOP8y ago

I’m talking about the Freedom Unleashes platform from SiFive.

Jedd8y ago

> I'm not sure there will be cheaper boards, to be honest.

a) No need to assert honesty - we assume everyone is trying to be honest with each other here.

b) History is littered with people believing or claiming that some thing can not possibly become smaller / cheaper / faster ... it's a dangerous predictive path to wander, with basically no recorded precedents to cite.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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qubex8y ago

garmaineOP8y ago

I’m talking about U54 from SiFive specifically.

opencl8y ago

jabl8y ago

The U54 is a single-issue in-order core. Again, what makes you label that a "workstation-class core"?

1 more reply

nickik8y ago

There are tons of other people who are working on RISC-V as well, LowRISC for example. The software should run everywhere.

garmaineOP8y ago

I’m talking about the Freedom Unleashes platform from SiFive.

Jedd8y ago

> I'm not sure there will be cheaper boards, to be honest.

a) No need to assert honesty - we assume everyone is trying to be honest with each other here.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse