• zarenki@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    This board has the StarFive JH7110 SoC. That processor has previously been in very low power single board computers like StarFive VisionFive 2 (2022) and Milk-V Mars (2023), a Raspberry Pi clone that can be bought for as low as $40. Its storage limitations (SD/eMMC rather than NVMe) show how much this isn’t meant for laptop use.

    Very underpowered for a laptop too, even when considering this is intended for developers and doesn’t need to be remotely performance competitive. Consider that this has just 4 RV64GC cores, the cheapest Intel board options Framework offers are 12 cores (4P+8E), and any modern RISC-V core is far simpler with less area than even an Intel E core. These cores also lack the RISC-V vector instructions extension.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          I guess? But why would you swap to RISC-V from their x86 boards? It’ll be slower and less compatible.

          I can see it for devs, but they’re going to want a separate laptop or an SBC, they’re not going to be swapping mainboards on the regular.

      • utopiah@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Indeed I bought a Banana Pi BPI-F3 with SpacemiT K1 8 core RISC-V chip,4G RAM and 16G eMMC https://www.banana-pi.org/en/banana-pi-sbcs/175.html for €95.89 including delivery. The form factor is nice though and I do enjoy Framework mission and partnerships. Depends what people need it for, good to have more options than aren’t “just” SBC/devboards. I won’t buy one now but I’ll definitely keep it in mind.

      • zarenki@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        I bought a Milk-V Mars (4GB version) last year. Pi-like form factor and price seemed like an easy pick for dipping my toes into RISC-V development, and I paid US$49 plus shipping at the time. There’s an 8GB version too but that was out of stock when I ordered.

        If I wanted to spend more I’d personally prefer to put that budget toward a higher core system (for faster compile times) before any laptop parts, as either HDMI+USB or VNC would be plenty sufficient even if I did need to work on GUI things.

        Other RISC-V laptops already are cheaper and with higher performance than this would be with Framework’s shell+screen+battery, so I’m not sure what need this fills. If you intend to use the board in an alternate case without laptop parts you might as well buy an SBC instead.