Pine64 is working on a RISC-V single-board computer – Liliputing
Liliputing
Open hardware company Pine64 has made a name for itself in recent years by offering low-cost, hacker-friendly hardware including smartphones, laptops, and single-board computers sporting ARM-based processors.
But Pine64 has also dabbled in RISC-V architecture. The Pinecil smart soldering iron has a RISC-V chip. So does the Pinecone IoT dev board. Now the company says it’s preparing to launch a single-board computer (SBC) that will be its most powerful RISC-V powered device yet.
While Pine64 hasn’t provided detailed specs yet (some are still being worked out), the company says that the upcoming SBC have a RISC-V chip that offers comparable performance to the Rockchip RK3566 quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 processor at the heart of Pine64’s Quartz64 board.
The RISC-V board will be available with 4GB or 8GB of RAM and features support for USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and a PCIe slot. And while Pine64 hasn’t revealed which RISC-V processor it’s using yet, the company notes that that the chip features an Imagination Technologies BXE-2-32 GPU which is designed for “entry-level” and “mid-range” applications and for which Imagination plans to make source code available soon.
Pine64 says the board will follow the “Model A” form factor, meaning it’ll measure around 133 x 80 x 19mm (5.24″ x 3.15″ x 0.75″). That makes it a bit larger than a Raspberry Pi Model B, but the extra space means there’s room for that PCIe slot and other I/O connectors.
RISC-V is a royalty-free, open instruction set architecture that’s been gaining steam over the past few years. While RISC-V chips currently lag behind the latest ARM and x86 processors in terms of performance, companies like SiFive have been working to close that gap in recent years. And a growing number of chip makers are entering the space – Imagination just unveiled its first real-time embedded RISC-V GPUs (and the use of an Imagination GPU makes me wonder if the upcoming Pine64 board will use one of those chips).
via Pine64 June 2022 Update
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Most excellent. A RISC-V board from a trusted manufacturer. Count me in.
About bloomin’ time!
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