For me, it’d be a close one between the Steam Deck and the Pinephone Pro. Although, the thought of having a phone that runs GNOME sounds like a whole lot of fun, so I think that I’d have to give it to the Pinephone Pro
cheap risc-v boards that can run a full linux distribution
there are some cool projects I’m following, but they’re pretty much all in china, and only available via taobao 😬
I think this is my answer, too. There’s been so much movement with risc-v and it’s been so rapid, it could completely alter the chip market in the very near term.
Could be great if people reunited and created a groupal account with some of them in the countries to which is send to send these things back to us.
This is something I never did to a big scale but to a little one with family and friends.
I am the one with the account at the service and receive the things, then I send them back or, if their address is allowed, I send the things directly to them.
They just pay me what it costs at all.
yeah, that’s be nice 🤗
though the seller/manufacturer of the board I’m eyeing promised to organize a group buy for interested people in eu, and put it on aliexpress some time later
I would prefer if they used an OpenCart instance or similar, to minimize the use of NonFree software by the people who buy board.
A little question: are the projects you are following Libre Hardware or are just Open Design with the Free RISC-V ISA and that is all?
i’m not really sure tbh
the particular one that I really want to get is called mangopi, and it’s based on the allwinner D1 core, which in turn uses alibaba’s xuantie C906 core, which is open source, however I’m unsure whether other components of the board are open source (like other controllers and stuff), but at least it claims so on their website
MangoPi
:3c
Edited: Thank you, BTW.
yeah, arm/riscv manufacturers are infinitely better at naming their components than x86 component manufacturers 😄
A risc-v SBC that’s both cheap and actually available.
The biggest tech disappointment for me this year was Beagleboard pulling out of their RISC-V project.
I share your desire for a RPI4 equivalent RV board next year… and I remain fairly optimistic that it will happen.
Wait, the BeagleV was retired??
Well… yes and no.
Beagleboard are no longer involved in “Starlight”, though StarFive & Radxa are producing the original - development - board, promising the second board with the GPU to follow.
Beagleboard have promised another RISC-V board - or perhaps two - next year.
Will also be Libre Hardware?
There’s not much information from Beagleboard on their plans at the moment, so far as I know.
The StarFive SBC - VisionFive - uses SiFive’s processor.
Any RISC-V system
I honestly don’t understand the advantage of a RISC-V system from a consumer point of view. Sure, for chip developers it is interesting to have a open system like that, but most seem to abuse this open-ness by adding proprietary extensions and thus the result is a chip that is just as bad as an ARM one from the consumer point of view.
Well… obviously some people simply prefer the open source philosophy - and we are seeing open source processors coming out of the open source instruction set : By backing RISC-V, they are sending a message to OEMs.
Nvidia’s argument for using RV was that they had the freedom to do things that they weren’t allowed to with ARM, and as a result they designed better microcontrollers. Surely that turns into the consumer’s advantage?
I’m just a couch potato, but as I understand it, RV can beat ARM on PPA because of its modularity : whether that turns into a significant advantage for the consumer, I guess depends on what the processor is being used for.
RnD could be sped up either because of “standing on the shoulders of giants” or because of not having to wrangle licenses : The consumer potentially gets the next generation tech quicker…
And production might be much cheaper, and those cost reductions could be passed on to the consumer.
True, but ARM has been pretty liberal with licensing. There is a risk of it falling under US control and thus sanctions against China though, which seems to be the main reason of the current interest in RISC-V.
Yes - Arm has had to ease up both on licensing fees to smaller companies, and also has granted more flexibility in design, both as a result of RISC-V’s popularity. And they certainly didn’t want to do the latter!
The really interesting question is : Will RISC-V have gained enough momentum by the time the Nvidia/Arm deal has been decided upon (and probably rejected)? (And was this all a ruse by Nvidia for RISC-V??)
The recently announced extension ratifications help - especially Vector. And China is certainly pushing it, thanks to the tech trade dispute.
But here’s the point : There’s no real reason for designers not to use RISC-V. They’ve been teaching RISC-V at top universities for a decade. There’s open source software available to design and ratify. There’s no licencing costs, and there’s even funding available to get designs fabbed.
Not sure, but if Nvidia can just use RV (R5?) now instead of ARM, why waste money to buy ARM then? The advantage to them I guess would be to form a monopoly, so the acquisition will surely not be allowed.
If it were a ruse I don’t see how such a ruse benefits RISC-V… perhaps fear of Nvidia owning ARM will drive others towards RISC-V, but that benefits Nvidia how? Better free designs?
Well… if you’re proposing to spend $40B, you’ve probably gamed it out!
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They’re allowed to buy Arm : they get full control of the ARM ISA, and can do with it what they like, regardless of anyone else using it… And yes, they get to find out competitors’ secret developments. They’d control what is being touted by some as the dominant ISA going forward. WIN. (I doubt it will be allowed to happen).
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But for acquisitions of this size, there’s always a long approval period : a time of indecision and uncertainty (which we’re experiencing atm). Everyone in the industry is putting in a contingency plan, in case they do get control of the ISA… Everyone is putting resources into RISC-V atm. Joining the foundation. Advertising for designers with RISC-V experience. So RISC-V benefits enormously, and much progress has been made, which Nvidia (as well as everyone else) can benefit from. WIN. And saved $40B to boot!
Good analysis
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I just think it’s neat to have a new architecture, and the fact that it would compete with ARM is also exciting. However, you are right that there are potential pitfalls. I am waiting to see how this goes, but I’m ready to embrace an open arch over more closed alternatives, even if it’s not perfect.
I’m curious to see if the Mill architecture will take off any time soon. Unfortunately, it’s not an open platform, but it would represent some interesting innovations in processor design. They’ve apparently been making steady progress, but publicly facing information about progress is limited.
First time I’ve even heard of this
It’s been in progress for a while, but it’s not gotten to market yet. The team’s pretty small and there is a lot of work to do as with any new architecture. It does provide some interesting potential to vastly reduce the power usage compared to out of order architectures. It also provides various other interesting innovations like an alternative to registers, L1-only memory, a single address space, and an intermediate instruction set that gets specialized to the individual processor.
PineNote . Open. Eink notetaking + reader. Should be ideal to fully transition from paper.
Same for me. Was close to purchasing a Remarkable before the announcement and I’m in a holding pattern now. Grad school is so many PDF’s.
I was looking into getting an eink display for my rasperberry pi so that I could have a minimalist terminal only computer similar to the light phone. Now, I’m really looking forward to getting a PineNote, loading a compatible distro on it, and avoiding having to build my own case!
I’m not quite up for a laptop upgrade (I just repaired the speakers), but I’m a year or two away so this is kind of “upcoming hardware”. I’ll be choosing between System76, Framework, or Librem. Each company is advancing a value that I care about, and I want my spending to reflect that.
- System76: The Linux Desktop via Pop OS! and some other projects
- Framework: Repair, device longevity, and the associated environmental benefits
- Librem: Privacy and security
I am currently leaning towards a Framework. They came out the gate with a solid product and I am hoping they will have time to address some shortcomings.
I would say the Steam Deck.
less specifically, steve jobs said something like, voice will be the next evolution in human to computer interaction. I would love to be able to control a terminal with voice control, and control the entire computer with voice control. Open source, no doubt.
Mycroft I think is still the top opensource voice assistant that I know of. If you are interested, you should check them out! https://mycroft.ai/
My understanding is that voice interfacing is already the most common way to interact with a smartphone in China. Chinese (and other non-alphabetic languages) are notoriously tedious to type, and all sorts of keyboards have been invented to make it easier, but they all have a learning curve. Instead, it is far simpler to simply use voice recognition. Over the last decade many companies have pivoted their focus towards the Chinese economy, so a lot of the voice assistants, customer service platforms, and other software innovations we enjoy in the west are the direct result of companies trying to break into Chinese markets (and other emerging markets) with voice-driven designs that are accessible to billions of people for whom typing is an insurmountable friction.
Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant’s User Friendly is a really good book for learning about state of the art UI / UX design and the current trends that are likely to determine what our computer interfaces will look like in 2025 - 2030.
https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/ , Fuchsia - Wikipedia - Another really interesting project. This is Google’s new operating system they are building from scratch to replace Android, ChromeOS, Windows, and perhaps even server Linux. Fuchsia is being built from the ground up to replace the traditional desktop metaphor with a conversational or “story driven” metaphor instead. The ultimate goal is to be able to tell your computer in human language what you want it to do and have the computer do it. e.g. “Ok Google, open the survey results Sarah emailed to me. Ok, now plot a histogram with markings at each standard deviation, oh and a pie chart too. Great, save that and email it to Kyle.”
I’m not aware of what Microsoft, Apple, or any other tech giants might be working on, but Fuchsia is at least currently open source under BSD, MIT, and Apache 2.0 licenses.
Pinephone keyboard and PineTime.
Librem 5 Phone, I’m thinking I’ll have it 1st half of 2022…Maybe
Libre phone 5 is cool but sadly I is too expensive for me
Precursor. I don’t have money to buy it but it seems so freaking cool!
Unfortunately, Fairphone only ships to the EU. Even the UK is out, presumably because of Brexit.
Whatever System76 pops out next.
@mossy Steam Deck.
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“excited” … ?
someone’s answer : sex toys 🤪 !nothing really
