cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/25606049
We’re happy to share that DeepComputing’s DC-ROMA RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13 is now in stock and shipping in the Framework Marketplace. This is very much a developer-focused board to help accelerate maturing the software ecosystem around RISC-V, so we recommend waiting for future RISC-V products if you’re looking for a consumer-ready experience. We shared more detail on the Mainboard in an earlier blog post and video, but as a quick summary, this is powered by a StarFive JH7110 processor that uses the open source RISC-V ISA. The team at DeepComputing designed it to drop directly into a Framework Laptop 13 chassis or Cooler Master Mainboard Case.
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Love what these guys are doing.
There’s also a mainboard case, so you don’t need the whole laptoppy thing at all if you don’t want to
https://frame.work/gb/en/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case
I’d love to see a (moderately) powerful ARM Framework, like one built on a Snapdragon X Elite or something in that vein
I hope texudo manages soon to get Linux running well on snapdragons!
I’ve got an irrational, non-evidence-based love for RISC dating back to the 90s PowerPC Mac era. Makes me want one.
Nice! I just bought an ARM laptop and installed Ubuntu on it, only to later learn that Ubuntu package support for RISCV is even more extensive than for ARM. I guess I’ll go with RISCV for my next machine.
Nice! I do like my AMD Framework though. But anyhow, nice to see there is a RISC-V option as well. Especially for early birds, that is for sure.
It is absolutely more of a development board than one meant even for early-bird adopters. The processing power is more on-par with a Raspberry Pi. Here’s a review of another development board using the same processor: https://bret.dk/risc-v-starfive-visionfive-2-review-jh7110/#Geekbench-6
Compare the Geekbench 6 scores to the Ryzen 7040HS in the Framework 16: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/4260192
As the review author explains, Geekbench 6 is a bit unfair to the JH7110 since it’s missing some processor extensions, but even if we pretended it had a similar lead over the Pi 4 as it does on the Unixbench suite, it’d still be an order of magnitude behind the AMD processor.
You’re not really gonna be gaming on this thing, and you might not have a great experience even with normal desktop productivity software. These boards are likely gonna be relegated mostly to compiling code and running tests.
If a future revision is a little more powerful though, it could maybe make for a decent netbook. At just $200 it could also be a pretty good value for the education sector, maybe as a dev board for systems programming courses.
How’s battery life?
The review I linked quotes 5-8W under load so I’d expect it to be about 10 hours on the Framework 13’s 55Wh battery and about ~15h on the Framework 16’s 85Wh battery.
But it also can’t play a 1080p YouTube video worth a damn so it’s hard to imagine what you’d actually wanna use it that long for.
By the time mine dies, this might be viable.
FOSS4life, ride or die!
Do keep in mind this is probably very underpowered. They even recommend waiting for future RISC-V products if you’re looking for a consumer-ready experience.
