Can we all take a minute to appreciate how hard Chris works, not just to produce such professional and informative videos, but to react and reply to so many comments! 👏
yeah but at the moment i would recommend an intel only or amd only laptop. It has open source drivers and in the case of amd its more efficient in case of performance...but yeah i like the ideo of the true open source in hardware
just got a thin client as server cause i don't want an ARM (raspberry pi) or whatever-new-fancy-architecture anymore - too often there is a cool software on Linux that says: but we only support x86
It's too bad you have to give this laptop back. It would be nice to see if the performance improves with a few software updates and some optimization. I am enjoying these RISC V videos!👍
I subscribed years ago after just one video about a raspberry pi. I love the informative nature of the channel. No fluff, just facts. I've shared the channel with teachers where I work and some use it in class and others said it was too corny and dry. Whatever, their loss. I love these videos.
This is great that there is a complete system. Really liking the current standard of 8 cores, 8 -16gb ram and NVME. and so i agree about the so say "couple of generations away" because of graphics processing. This is a great start for sbc risc-v computing to launch mainstream.
This is great! There needs to be another choice for the consumer apart from the big three. I hope RISC-V soon becomes competitive in the processor market. Also, would love to see some budget Android devices on RISC-V very soon.
Now we need a linux DE made exclusively for portable devices like tablets and cellphones, a special session with a branch repository of Flathub and applications made specifically for devices like these and android app emulation, maybe finally we will have a completely spyware free OS portable device, with risc-v processor without any minix running inside with any backdoor, and maybe completely free and open source modules installed without backdoors as well.
@ginger_toggaf I know, thats why, i think its a shame, what the hell, why the zuck we have to abide by the iOS and android monopoly with bloated spyware inside, linux phones were an amazing idea, but its lacking as hell.
@@DavidCoutinhoCG you are living under the rock or what android is open source. If you are so paranoid just make your own android skin. There are lots of android skins available without google services like graphene os, lineage os and many more mi and Vivo companies have their bootloader unlocked so buy one of these phones and load your own android skin.
I love how this laptop looks, it's so clean and simple. Just as many bells and whistles as you could expect from a development platform and still looks very slick.
Christopher always gives me vibe of a small-town computer store owner of the late 1980's. The kind that is a computer enthusiast first and a retail operator second, and is always happy to discuss the latest tech with anyone irrespective of if they are a serious customer or (like myself in that era) a schoolkid who doesn't have enough pocket money to actually buy anything.
An exciting alternative to all the proprietary stuff we are stuck with these days(even on Linux). With Intel and AMD pushing 'updates' to their microarchitecture,this looks promising.
I sure agree with you on how far RISC-V has come in the past few years! I just watched a laptop with RISC-V run two operating systems, two word processors, and Aisleriot Solitaire, record video from a webcam(!!!!! REALLY big deal too!), play video back, and even compile and run a C program featuring a friendly greeting from our favorite pair of scissors. Computing is always full of surprises, ain't it? :)
@@404hopenotfound No one's saying it's a price-to-performance powerhouse, but as far as laptops go, $500~600 is in fact quite affordable and this product should hopefully help open up development more broadly and expand the architecture.
@@404hopenotfound it IS catching up, and rapidly. Two years ago the best that would have been possible would be a single core 1.0 GHz with 1 or 2 GB RAM, and here we are today with multiple 8 core 16 GB RAM laptops with CPUs pushing 2.0 GHz. This time next year we'll have certainly SBCs and maybe already updated laptops with 16 core 2.4 GHz CPU with each core in early Intel Core-i7 territory. One or two years after that they will be in Apple M1 territory -- which is what my main desktop computer actually is right now, and I expect will still be in 2-3 years. All of this stuff is not speculation, it is real products that are currently in the development pipeline, developed by serious experienced people who are fresh from e.g. Apple and AMD and Qualcomm CPU development experience.
@@BruceHoult it's good to see improvements they will need to get a lot more software working on risc v and Apple as much as I dislike them they know how to make a amazing soc
Definitely an exciting piece of hardware. I appreciate your exploration of this RISC-V laptop! RISC-V development has progressed quicker than I expected. Looking forward to your next video!
Having a Linux laptop between 4 and 600 dollars. Is for me already good news. There is the German company "tuxedo", but they are way more expensive. I have some feeling that this will become the new "thinkpad".
Tuxedo does target more high-end devices for developers; the RISC-V CPU right here is waaaay too slow for that kind of use. I think the main issue with RISC-V adoption will actually not be the software support on linux desktops, but rather the lack of high-end CPUs. I think it'll take at least 4-5 more years before RISC-V becomes a viable desktop platform for more than casual usage.
there are a few other manufacturers as well. But they all suffer from the same problem -they are only found online. They aren't available in local stores so you can't try them and check the build quality before you buy.
Fantastic works as always Chris. As a fan of all things open-source, I'd love to see AMD, and Intel produce RISC-V CPUs. Or a new manufacturer making something that can not only compete, but put the willies up the legacy manufacturers. Open-source is the way forward. I just hope that more people use and see the benefits of open-source software and hardware.
Good Morning Mr. Barnatt! Dealing with a hot water heater that had catastrophic failure. Was out of the house for over 2 hours and it put 2 inches (5cm) of water through our entire home. I'll have to try to find time to watch.. but we are looking at a near total loss here. I'll try to keep watching as much as I have time.
Two months later: I hope that you got the hot water heater sorted without too much damage and are back to comfortably watching Mr. Barnatt's content in a dry home. Kind regards.
Greetings. This is a surprisingly fantastic video. Witnessing a RISC - V laptop is certainly raising our expectation for the future in terms of alternative personal computing.
Although it's a laptop, the price is still quite high - you can preorder e.g. a Milk-V Jupiter board for ~60$ (4GB RAM)/ ~115$ (16GB RAM) with the same processor..
I was wondering about the price of a home built Risc-V system vs this laptop. For someone who needs to travel, this would be Ideal. However, most pioneers in this field already have homebuilt systems. I do wish the best for this company though.
@@tomnesler2089 The point was that you can put a Milk-V , a $100 screen, and a $20 keyboard into a $20 brief case/school case , and have the same thing.
@@isilder the same computing capability, yes, but not the same level of slick. Try using you set-up on an airline tray table! Or even in the gate lounge. Personally I'm still going for the lashed-up SBC experience myself, but it's good to have choices, no?
It has. ARM is a type of RISC based architecture. RISCV is another reduced instruction set architecture with the key value of not requiring a license to develop for. The transition to it will take some time but should be shorter than the Windows transition to ARM. Which Microsoft has been trying for over a decade or something close.
Great video and information as expected. Really enjoyed your c code demonstration. Running the 'Greetings from Mr. Scissors' program was really fun for me!
Hi Chris! Completely unrelated, but I just realized how awesome your video setup is. When you zoomed in on the keyboard, the micro-texture on the aluminum/plastic showed up really well even crushed by TH-cam. Would be cool for doing photogrammetry or ripping textures for product modeling in Blender!
@@vprwave I've seen it! Today was just the first time I really saw the potential outside of Chris' top-notch hardware videos. I've been doing a lot of texturing in Blender lately, I think that's why it especially caught my eye.
Hey! Haven't been here in a while. Glad to see you on Jeff Geerling's RISC-V video, and commenting on a RISC-V video. Just RISC-V everywhere! Haha... I would definitely want to help contribute to the maturity of this platform, so I will get one of these hardware soon! Great job on this video!
It's impressive to see the progress of RISC-V. I'm quite happy with that. Pleasant presentation and I do like what I just watched. I believe it's a little bit behind other RISC-V SOB, but it seems just a matter of software improvement. Have you analyzed the temperature of CPU and GPU/NPU, Chris? Have you guys noticed the quality of the webcam? It's great! Just to put in perspective, Lenovo and Asus have in the market a plenty of laptops with camera bellow this quality.
@@autohmae Why wouldn't it? When you just need some kind of general-purpose core for your product, you can either go through the restrictive licensing dance with something like ARM (or ARC, rather famously, in Intel's case), or you can use something that is unencumbered and then deploy a core that you might develop yourself or adapt from someone else's work. There have been Allwinner ARM-based SoCs that actually used OpenRISC cores - these being quite close in heritage to MIPS and RISC-V - presumably because of the power consumption characteristics. They could have conceivably used some smaller ARM cores, but it is entirely possible that such ARM cores either they weren't up to the job, or maybe using them would have cut into their wafer thin margins.
This is a huge step forward but part of me still wants those (mostly experimental) very fast RISC cpu's to reach a stable state and sold to the consumer market I just wanna be able to compare my i5 with my RISC-V machine and prefer the RISC one
I am loving all of the content you've been producing about RISC-V, Chris. Obviously there is a hype cycle to most technology, but you're providing real numbers, honest reviews, and setting reasonable expectations for current gen RISC-V based systems. The more attention it gets, the faster the technology matures, and hopefully the better we'll all be for it. Cheers from one of those ungrateful colonists on the other side of the Atlantic!
Despite its performance, the significant advantages of this CPU is that it does not have the Management Engine (ME) backdoor that is present in all Intel processors.
@@danielpicassomunoz2752 Yeah, I think it's naive to think only Intel does that. CPU manufacturers can have access to way too much data for governments not to try to use that for their own benefit. These early RISC-V chips might be safe but the moment one of these becomes mainstream I fully expect some kind of backdoor to be found.
This is very exciting! As you said, RISC-V has come a long way in the last years. I remember the first SBCs running limited and slightly unstable specialty Linux distros, and now here is ubuntu running on a modern RISC-V laptop!
Interesting video! I didn't know anybody was making a laptop yet, and apparently this is the second one.... I realize the laptop is probably already mailed back, but I'd like to mention two tests I would have liked to have seen....just for the smiles and giggles. Linux kernel compile, for the Risk V architecture, and a Chromium compile for the Risk V architecture. If you are adopting this architecture, there is a good chance that you're going to have to compile a lot of stuff. Some of it may just need recompiled for the new architecture, but most of it will probably need at least a few lines of code added or deleted or changed. I know you can compile on one architecture for another, but sometimes that is not available. I look forward to your next video!!
This is the second version from that company. There is also the MuseBook, with the same CPU. Also a RISC-V main board for the high end FrameWork laptop has been announced and will be available shortly. And Sipeed have two RISC-V laptops in different sizes.
Amazing video. I was surprised to see batocera Linux to be highly compatible with visionfive2 risc-v board. Seems support for risc-v is getting more and more mature with age. Just hoping more people adopt these solutions as more and more software improvements get released
While it would still be some time till we get a CPU that could match up the performance from the likes of Intel or AMD. This is an exciting update to the RISC-V platform.
Finally? What about PowerPC? HP PA-RISC from the 1990s? The defining thing about RISC-V is that it's non-proprietary. Unfortunately, I think that with a weaker profit motive, it may never catch up to competing architectures. Also, for a development setup, only 8 GPIO connections is a little disappointing.
Your videos are fantastic! Also this Risc V laptop opens a whole new category. I hope you will consider getting one for future videos and tinker with it further more as improvements and updates are applied for it.
I'm very impressed with the presentation and build quality of the laptop, honestly I'd love one myself, once the platform matures a little more (and maybe install KDE) I could see myself using one as a daily driver.
I can't believe they're advertising an EOL OS (just checked their site) and won't' commit to updates. Bookmarked but skipping for now. Vendor abandonment is my top concern for novel hardware. Everything else about it looks great. A second nvme slot for a mirror drive could make this my daily driver.
@@BruceHoult When i was using kubuntu, i always preferred the LTS version. I would not use this as a daily desktop machine but for a server, NAS or tinkering machine and LTS is better for this.
would love to see a lighter Desktp environment (DE) or widow manager (WM) instead of heavy gnome. Would also love to see it perform when compiled specifcally for it's hardware using gentoo. Also check if hardware acceleration is enabled for the DE/WM and video playback both in native players (VLC,MPV) and browser
Genuinely excited to see how RISC-V turns out. Especially since the RasPi devs just released a new chip that can switch between ARM and RISC-V on boot.
Nice to see RISC-V dev laptop being available to wide public. It's no longer just microcontroller chip even it has still long way to go to match higher performance of other proprietary RISC based chips. RISC-V as open platform is definitely getting more attention and popularity and that's quite important to keep the spirit and focus alive. This platform will surely grow with open source community besides more popular and widely used proprietary RISC platforms. Thx for brining this laptop to light, nice review!
Surprised it is as slow as it is with an 8 core processor, still kind of early days so probably better optimization will come as more people start working with it. This laptop will be a big step to getting more hands on this architecture.
Very good, indeed. Was asking around, last year if anyone is fiddling with RISC-V hardware, already - and here we have a laptop for the price of a mid tier smartphone.
Sunday greetings all! Another impressive movement forward for RISC-V. One thing that I will never understand, what possesses laptop keyboard makers to put the power button where the Delete key has always been?
I wish laptop makers would just put the power button on the side, and not require me to open the lid - for when I use it with an external screen, keyboard and mouse.
A very interesting RISC-V development laptop, I won't be buying one any time soon. Hopefully by 2026 the future will be looking more RISC-y, come on x86 move over you've had your day!! The laptop came with plenty of ports including GPIO & the supplied development pack, overall the colour used was very nice. Thanks Chris for another interesting video I hope that things are OK with you?Something towards the tea & biccy fund :)
@@alanthornton3530 Things are going as normally as they should! I admittedly was just a little bit late to the party this morning. I was up late talking to a good friend. :)
Right now, it seems the original DC-ROMA is cheaper in USD, so while I'm not quite sold on the price of the DC-ROMA II, you did sell me on the general lineup. The fact that I can get into fully open-sourced RISC computing without breaking my bank is an amazing prospect, as I understand that you can only interpret certain parts of an ARM CPU due to executive meddling, where compiling would give great performance boosts.
As the first (maybe?) to arrive on the market, this laptop paves the way for some very interesting developments. However, I have to confess to shedding a little tear: I've always had the fantasy that a laptop built around a Raspberry Pi CM-4 would eventually become available on the market... Shame! But congratulations on this latest product, and thanks for the excellent presentation!
This is shockingly good. I don't think I could switch for my daily usage yet but it isn't too far off. Needs much better media acceleration for instance.
@@RafaCoringaProducoes OK then some other CPU benchmark. This is all about the CPU after all. Not the disk or the GPU. And the CPU seems a bit sluggish so it's worth quantifying the performance.
This was really cool to see, would be interesting to see the history of why RiscV seems to have had less adoption than arm despite the licensing fees of arm seeming like a large cost for businesses to swallow.
Yes, but i guess it can be because the demand for 16gb ram version is low, economies of scale you know. 8 gb of ram is good for such low power CPU. (Remember that each core is only 20% faster than a Cortex A55)
I'm always happy to see a non-x86 laptop. There's been PowerPC and even Moto68K laptops and of course tons of ARM laptops, but this might be the first normal looking RISC-V laptop I've seen, though I definitely appreciate the small handheld laptops I've been seeing. I'd love to see more laptops with a debug interface on the side like that.
Can we all take a minute to appreciate how hard Chris works, not just to produce such professional and informative videos, but to react and reply to so many comments! 👏
Thanks. :)
I agree with you :)
We know it's exciting when we wait until 1:25 for "take a closer look".
I also agree. Thanks for doing it!
Love the work Chris does
Honestly that 8 pin gpio is just about the coolest thing I have ever seen in a modern laptop.
This is beautiful. I studied RISC-V in University. Seeing it in the physical form instead of simulating it and seeing wave forms is very nice.
FINALLY! An ARM/RISC based laptop that is not bound to Microsoft's CoPilot Plus Regime.
yeah but at the moment i would recommend an intel only or amd only laptop. It has open source drivers and in the case of amd its more efficient in case of performance...but yeah i like the ideo of the true open source in hardware
...and hopefully does not come with a hidden onboard processor that the user cannot access...
For me that's the biggest plus
I mean, even the copilot+ laptopa have better driver support on Linux than windows.
just got a thin client as server cause i don't want an ARM (raspberry pi) or whatever-new-fancy-architecture anymore - too often there is a cool software on Linux that says: but we only support x86
That's every macbook.
You are the most nerdish looking dude talking about the nerdiest possible things, and I love it!
He's our guy!
@@johneggmuldoon3176 nerds still cool in 2024, nothing wrong with that
It's too bad you have to give this laptop back. It would be nice to see if the performance improves with a few software updates and some optimization. I am enjoying these RISC V videos!👍
Agrees 100% about this.
Dropping a view/comment/like to boost the video’s consideration within the algorithm.
Most apprecated! :)
Dropping a like/comment to boost this comment's!
I subscribed years ago after just one video about a raspberry pi. I love the informative nature of the channel. No fluff, just facts. I've shared the channel with teachers where I work and some use it in class and others said it was too corny and dry. Whatever, their loss. I love these videos.
Thanks for watching -- and sharing! :)
Their loss indeed.
This is great that there is a complete system. Really liking the current standard of 8 cores, 8 -16gb ram and NVME. and so i agree about the so say "couple of generations away" because of graphics processing. This is a great start for sbc risc-v computing to launch mainstream.
This is great! There needs to be another choice for the consumer apart from the big three. I hope RISC-V soon becomes competitive in the processor market. Also, would love to see some budget Android devices on RISC-V very soon.
Exactly. Choice is what this is all about.
Now we need a linux DE made exclusively for portable devices like tablets and cellphones, a special session with a branch repository of Flathub and applications made specifically for devices like these and android app emulation, maybe finally we will have a completely spyware free OS portable device, with risc-v processor without any minix running inside with any backdoor, and maybe completely free and open source modules installed without backdoors as well.
@ginger_toggaf I know, thats why, i think its a shame, what the hell, why the zuck we have to abide by the iOS and android monopoly with bloated spyware inside, linux phones were an amazing idea, but its lacking as hell.
I would love a RISC-V phone running some Linux that is comparable to Android.
@@DavidCoutinhoCG you are living under the rock or what android is open source. If you are so paranoid just make your own android skin. There are lots of android skins available without google services like graphene os, lineage os and many more mi and Vivo companies have their bootloader unlocked so buy one of these phones and load your own android skin.
Time to get RISC-y once again! This time on a laptop. Good morning, everyone! :)
Greetings -- and a silver medal!
@@ExplainingComputers Thank you! _[eats the medal]_
@@Praxibetel-Ix
"Officer, Praxibetel-lx seems to be poisened because he ate a silver medal, sir"
@@xrafter *she. I needed the iron! 😂
Love that this hardware dictates the OS rather than global corp dictating that YOU buy new hardware compatible with their OS.
Nice.
Nah, I say it's the opposite: the lack of other OS (namely Window$) dictates which OS you need to use, at least with RISC.
@@rautamiekka To be fair Linux is not the only OS that can run on RiscV
This is the way it ought to be. Software should conform to hardware to wring out every bit of performance from your machine.
@@Wingnut353What else is available, other than Android (which is really Linux anyway)?
I love how this laptop looks, it's so clean and simple. Just as many bells and whistles as you could expect from a development platform and still looks very slick.
Christopher all I can say is your a badass. I have learned so much from you over the years thank you.
I appreciate that. :)
Christopher always gives me vibe of a small-town computer store owner of the late 1980's. The kind that is a computer enthusiast first and a retail operator second, and is always happy to discuss the latest tech with anyone irrespective of if they are a serious customer or (like myself in that era) a schoolkid who doesn't have enough pocket money to actually buy anything.
An exciting alternative to all the proprietary stuff we are stuck with these days(even on Linux). With Intel and AMD pushing 'updates' to their microarchitecture,this looks promising.
I sure agree with you on how far RISC-V has come in the past few years! I just watched a laptop with RISC-V run two operating systems, two word processors, and Aisleriot Solitaire, record video from a webcam(!!!!! REALLY big deal too!), play video back, and even compile and run a C program featuring a friendly greeting from our favorite pair of scissors.
Computing is always full of surprises, ain't it? :)
What an excellent summary!
@@ExplainingComputers 😊
A fully fledged RISC-V laptop was nice to see. Would have loved to see the 8pin GPIO connector on it in action. Anyway, great video as always!
I waited for that.
That is really cool to see risk V architecture being democratized like this with an affordable and decent laptop! We are living in exciting times!
Affordable is subjective in is probably the slowest 500$ laptop you can get risc v have a lot of caching up to do if it wants to stand a chance
@@404hopenotfound No one's saying it's a price-to-performance powerhouse, but as far as laptops go, $500~600 is in fact quite affordable and this product should hopefully help open up development more broadly and expand the architecture.
@@egarcia1360 thats fair hope someone can get windows ruining on risc v competition is good
@@404hopenotfound it IS catching up, and rapidly. Two years ago the best that would have been possible would be a single core 1.0 GHz with 1 or 2 GB RAM, and here we are today with multiple 8 core 16 GB RAM laptops with CPUs pushing 2.0 GHz. This time next year we'll have certainly SBCs and maybe already updated laptops with 16 core 2.4 GHz CPU with each core in early Intel Core-i7 territory. One or two years after that they will be in Apple M1 territory -- which is what my main desktop computer actually is right now, and I expect will still be in 2-3 years. All of this stuff is not speculation, it is real products that are currently in the development pipeline, developed by serious experienced people who are fresh from e.g. Apple and AMD and Qualcomm CPU development experience.
@@BruceHoult it's good to see improvements they will need to get a lot more software working on risc v and Apple as much as I dislike them they know how to make a amazing soc
Definitely an exciting piece of hardware. I appreciate your exploration of this RISC-V laptop! RISC-V development has progressed quicker than I expected. Looking forward to your next video!
Why do I get so excited about this?
I guess I just love open source stuff!
Having a Linux laptop between 4 and 600 dollars. Is for me already good news. There is the German company "tuxedo", but they are way more expensive. I have some feeling that this will become the new "thinkpad".
Considering that all these processors run slower than machines from 2011, "the new ThinkPad" seems a tad over-optimistic.
Tuxedo does target more high-end devices for developers; the RISC-V CPU right here is waaaay too slow for that kind of use. I think the main issue with RISC-V adoption will actually not be the software support on linux desktops, but rather the lack of high-end CPUs. I think it'll take at least 4-5 more years before RISC-V becomes a viable desktop platform for more than casual usage.
there are a few other manufacturers as well. But they all suffer from the same problem -they are only found online. They aren't available in local stores so you can't try them and check the build quality before you buy.
Fantastic works as always Chris.
As a fan of all things open-source, I'd love to see AMD, and Intel produce RISC-V CPUs. Or a new manufacturer making something that can not only compete, but put the willies up the legacy manufacturers.
Open-source is the way forward. I just hope that more people use and see the benefits of open-source software and hardware.
Thank you Chris for all your videos. I hope you are feeling better after you mentioned quite awhile ago that you had a serious illness.
Good Morning Mr. Barnatt! Dealing with a hot water heater that had catastrophic failure. Was out of the house for over 2 hours and it put 2 inches (5cm) of water through our entire home. I'll have to try to find time to watch.. but we are looking at a near total loss here. I'll try to keep watching as much as I have time.
That's absolutely terrible! I'm so sorry. :(
Two months later: I hope that you got the hot water heater sorted without too much damage and are back to comfortably watching Mr. Barnatt's content in a dry home. Kind regards.
man, RISC architecture is gonna change everything... RISC is good
Thanks again Professor! Always look forward to "A closer look"...
Not bad, Chris. Things are moving on. Thanks for putting in the time to bring this to us.
Greetings Brian! :)
Greetings. This is a surprisingly fantastic video. Witnessing a RISC - V laptop is certainly raising our expectation for the future in terms of alternative personal computing.
This is what future laptop form: RISCV + Linux
Nice to see that RISC-V is starting to show some real hardware - I have high hope for RISC-V.
Although it's a laptop, the price is still quite high - you can preorder e.g. a Milk-V Jupiter board for ~60$ (4GB RAM)/ ~115$ (16GB RAM) with the same processor..
I was wondering about the price of a home built Risc-V system vs this laptop. For someone who needs to travel, this would be Ideal. However, most pioneers in this field already have homebuilt systems. I do wish the best for this company though.
@@tomnesler2089 The point was that you can put a Milk-V , a $100 screen, and a $20 keyboard into a $20 brief case/school case , and have the same thing.
@@isilder the same computing capability, yes, but not the same level of slick. Try using you set-up on an airline tray table! Or even in the gate lounge. Personally I'm still going for the lashed-up SBC experience myself, but it's good to have choices, no?
Long term this is for development for the average consumer. This is the type of hardware an average consumer would get.
Love all the RISC-V coverage. It’s brilliant. Keep it coming :)
Thank you! Will do!
iVe been reliably told back in the early 90s that RISC architecture will change everything
we are still waiting
And it did. For better or worse, RISC processors are what makes smartphones and IoT devices possible.
It already did. ARM is RISC and is everywhere.
HACK THE PLANET!!
It has. ARM is a type of RISC based architecture. RISCV is another reduced instruction set architecture with the key value of not requiring a license to develop for. The transition to it will take some time but should be shorter than the Windows transition to ARM. Which Microsoft has been trying for over a decade or something close.
Great to see another Imagination PowerVR GPU in a RISC-V platform, the GPU of choice for RISC-V! PowerVR coming back with a vengeance! :)
Great video and information as expected. Really enjoyed your c code demonstration. Running the 'Greetings from Mr. Scissors' program was really fun for me!
Wow !!! I expected the price to be much more!! With risc-v still in development I was very impressed!!! I'm looking forward to seeing more!!!
Hi Chris! Completely unrelated, but I just realized how awesome your video setup is. When you zoomed in on the keyboard, the micro-texture on the aluminum/plastic showed up really well even crushed by TH-cam. Would be cool for doing photogrammetry or ripping textures for product modeling in Blender!
Thanks for noticing. :)
He made a video about the studio setup and equipment he uses to achieve the exceptional quality, in case you are interested.
@@vprwave I've seen it! Today was just the first time I really saw the potential outside of Chris' top-notch hardware videos. I've been doing a lot of texturing in Blender lately, I think that's why it especially caught my eye.
It's amazing how fast RISC-V is growing; open standards are a great thing for the market.
Congratulations on 1 mil!
11pm on Sunday night in E Australia - love it!
Steady progress and no doubt acceleration ahead given geopolitics of ARM/x86 chip design availability. Useful glimpse into the future.
Woah thats a neat RISC laptop, Im all for a RISC-V future. Thanks for sharing, Anne Robinson
Hey! Haven't been here in a while. Glad to see you on Jeff Geerling's RISC-V video, and commenting on a RISC-V video. Just RISC-V everywhere! Haha... I would definitely want to help contribute to the maturity of this platform, so I will get one of these hardware soon! Great job on this video!
Greetings!
It's genuinely impressive how usable the Spacemit K1/M1 SoC is. RISC-V is still a baby and we're getting hardware like this now.
Ah it's the future I love these laptop thanks for the video. Very interesting
The next two years should be interesting. Thanks for the interesting video Chris!
It's impressive to see the progress of RISC-V. I'm quite happy with that. Pleasant presentation and I do like what I just watched. I believe it's a little bit behind other RISC-V SOB, but it seems just a matter of software improvement. Have you analyzed the temperature of CPU and GPU/NPU, Chris?
Have you guys noticed the quality of the webcam? It's great! Just to put in perspective, Lenovo and Asus have in the market a plenty of laptops with camera bellow this quality.
I don't know why, but seeing you making that video with the webcam, and play it back, with no problems seems wildly advanced :D
We have laptop, desktop, and SBC covered. What will be the first RISC-V toaster??
Greetings Jeff. And my favourite RISC-V product so far is the RC car: deepcomputing.io/product/dc-romeo-risc-v-rc-car/
Did I see that correctly ? The RC-car runs on a RV32IMAC chip, which is a chip from Xilinx which is an AMD company ?
@@autohmae Why wouldn't it? When you just need some kind of general-purpose core for your product, you can either go through the restrictive licensing dance with something like ARM (or ARC, rather famously, in Intel's case), or you can use something that is unencumbered and then deploy a core that you might develop yourself or adapt from someone else's work.
There have been Allwinner ARM-based SoCs that actually used OpenRISC cores - these being quite close in heritage to MIPS and RISC-V - presumably because of the power consumption characteristics. They could have conceivably used some smaller ARM cores, but it is entirely possible that such ARM cores either they weren't up to the job, or maybe using them would have cut into their wafer thin margins.
This is a huge step forward but part of me still wants those (mostly experimental) very fast RISC cpu's to reach a stable state and sold to the consumer market
I just wanna be able to compare my i5 with my RISC-V machine and prefer the RISC one
Great review Chris, very exciting as you say!
I am loving all of the content you've been producing about RISC-V, Chris. Obviously there is a hype cycle to most technology, but you're providing real numbers, honest reviews, and setting reasonable expectations for current gen RISC-V based systems. The more attention it gets, the faster the technology matures, and hopefully the better we'll all be for it.
Cheers from one of those ungrateful colonists on the other side of the Atlantic!
Despite its performance, the significant advantages of this CPU is that it does not have the Management Engine (ME) backdoor that is present in all Intel processors.
Very true.
that we know of, so far
@@danielpicassomunoz2752 yes lol every manufacter would use risc v as wished... Please dont start a geopolitical war in this comment
@@danielpicassomunoz2752 Yeah, I think it's naive to think only Intel does that. CPU manufacturers can have access to way too much data for governments not to try to use that for their own benefit. These early RISC-V chips might be safe but the moment one of these becomes mainstream I fully expect some kind of backdoor to be found.
When dealing with RISC-V only the ISA is guaranteed to be open. Most processor designs are actually still closed.
This is very exciting! As you said, RISC-V has come a long way in the last years. I remember the first SBCs running limited and slightly unstable specialty Linux distros, and now here is ubuntu running on a modern RISC-V laptop!
WOW. I am truly impressed with this laptop and how RISC-V is maturing! Excellent video!
I love how the direction of RISC-V is going! It is slowly getting some real momentum! Great video as always!
Thanks for showing this laptop, Chris. Cool to see new RISC-V products. 👍
Interesting video! I didn't know anybody was making a laptop yet, and apparently this is the second one....
I realize the laptop is probably already mailed back, but I'd like to mention two tests I would have liked to have seen....just for the smiles and giggles.
Linux kernel compile, for the Risk V architecture, and a Chromium compile for the Risk V architecture.
If you are adopting this architecture, there is a good chance that you're going to have to compile a lot of stuff. Some of it may just need recompiled for the new architecture, but most of it will probably need at least a few lines of code added or deleted or changed. I know you can compile on one architecture for another, but sometimes that is not available.
I look forward to your next video!!
This is the second version from that company. There is also the MuseBook, with the same CPU. Also a RISC-V main board for the high end FrameWork laptop has been announced and will be available shortly. And Sipeed have two RISC-V laptops in different sizes.
@@BruceHoult There's also the Pinetab-V from PINE64 which also has a JH7110.
Good morning Professor.Tank you.
Amazing video. I was surprised to see batocera Linux to be highly compatible with visionfive2 risc-v board. Seems support for risc-v is getting more and more mature with age. Just hoping more people adopt these solutions as more and more software improvements get released
While it would still be some time till we get a CPU that could match up the performance from the likes of Intel or AMD. This is an exciting update to the RISC-V platform.
its very slow my old i5 from 2014 is way faster ,even my first pc with e7500e core 2 duo with a hdd from 2009 is faster to boot apps and windows.
Nice to always see your enthousiasm for RiscV.
it's so cool that RISC is finally getting it's time to shine in the spotlight!
Spotlight how by being so bad that people actually notice?
Finally? What about PowerPC? HP PA-RISC from the 1990s? The defining thing about RISC-V is that it's non-proprietary. Unfortunately, I think that with a weaker profit motive, it may never catch up to competing architectures. Also, for a development setup, only 8 GPIO connections is a little disappointing.
Your videos are fantastic! Also this Risc V laptop opens a whole new category. I hope you will consider getting one for future videos and tinker with it further more as improvements and updates are applied for it.
a lighter distro would've been more suiting i think
Alpine Linux has a RISC-V port now
I'm very impressed with the presentation and build quality of the laptop, honestly I'd love one myself, once the platform matures a little more (and maybe install KDE) I could see myself using one as a daily driver.
I can't believe they're advertising an EOL OS (just checked their site) and won't' commit to updates.
Bookmarked but skipping for now. Vendor abandonment is my top concern for novel hardware.
Everything else about it looks great. A second nvme slot for a mirror drive could make this my daily driver.
And then it's not even the LTS distro.
Personally, i'm not a big ubuntu fan too. I prefer openSUSE.
risc-v is currently in the hobbyst/enthusiast phase. lots of companies experimenting. they can't commit to anything long-term.
@@hyperturbotechnomike would you seriously prefer 22.04 LTS over 23.10??? 24.04 LTS is too new to have been used during development of the machine.
@@BruceHoult When i was using kubuntu, i always preferred the LTS version. I would not use this as a daily desktop machine but for a server, NAS or tinkering machine and LTS is better for this.
Also, I'm in love with the ExplainingComputers extended universe. I would go to the ends of the earth for Mr Scissors and Stanley the Knife.
would love to see a lighter Desktp environment (DE) or widow manager (WM) instead of heavy gnome. Would also love to see it perform when compiled specifcally for it's hardware using gentoo. Also check if hardware acceleration is enabled for the DE/WM and video playback both in native players (VLC,MPV) and browser
Genuinely excited to see how RISC-V turns out. Especially since the RasPi devs just released a new chip that can switch between ARM and RISC-V on boot.
Hope you will do a Framework Risc V laptop 💻
Nice to see RISC-V dev laptop being available to wide public. It's no longer just microcontroller chip even it has still long way to go to match higher performance of other proprietary RISC based chips. RISC-V as open platform is definitely getting more attention and popularity and that's quite important to keep the spirit and focus alive. This platform will surely grow with open source community besides more popular and widely used proprietary RISC platforms. Thx for brining this laptop to light, nice review!
Surprised it is as slow as it is with an 8 core processor, still kind of early days so probably better optimization will come as more people start working with it. This laptop will be a big step to getting more hands on this architecture.
Just because you have 8 cores doesn't mean it will be fast if all the cores are slow 1.6/2ghz is vary slow nowadays
Each core is in-order dual-issue at 1.6 GHz. That is similar to a Raspberry Pi 3, just with twice as many cores.
@@404hopenotfound Don't compare gigahertz. That means literally nothing.
@@GigaWhatt0 what are we ment to use then and it doesn't change the fact that these cores are slow
Ubuntu + flatpaks
Very good, indeed.
Was asking around, last year if anyone is fiddling with RISC-V hardware, already - and here we have a laptop for the price of a mid tier smartphone.
Sunday greetings all! Another impressive movement forward for RISC-V. One thing that I will never understand, what possesses laptop
keyboard makers to put the power button where the Delete key has always been?
Agreed on the power button. For years I had a laptop like that!
I wish laptop makers would just put the power button on the side, and not require me to open the lid - for when I use it with an external screen, keyboard and mouse.
Hats off to you kind sir, for taking the risc (not just any, but the fifth installment of it) for us and tell your tale about your exploits.
RISC - V revolution 🎉🎉🎉
Very impressive, I am just amazed how far we have come from my first computer running MSX/CP/M
A very interesting RISC-V development laptop, I won't be buying one any time soon. Hopefully by 2026 the future will be looking more RISC-y, come on x86 move over you've had your day!!
The laptop came with plenty of ports including GPIO & the supplied development pack, overall the colour used was very nice. Thanks Chris for another interesting video I hope that things are OK with you?Something towards the tea & biccy fund :)
Greeting Alan! Thanks for your support. :)
Hi, Alan! :D
@@Praxibetel-Ix Hey Ford I hope things are OK with you this morning / afternoon? ;)
@@alanthornton3530 Things are going as normally as they should! I admittedly was just a little bit late to the party this morning. I was up late talking to a good friend. :)
You act like risc and x86 are not made around the same time they are both old
It is certainly interesting to see the slow but constant development of the RISC V chips. Another well produced video Chris.
the way he looks like the stereotype of an 80s nerd is kind of charming
It's amazing just how fast RISC-V is moving.
No way I'm investing that much money on a slow system. I'll keep waiting for the technology to catch up.
I believe it is not about speed, but rather exploring and walking on new ground.
Right now, it seems the original DC-ROMA is cheaper in USD, so while I'm not quite sold on the price of the DC-ROMA II, you did sell me on the general lineup. The fact that I can get into fully open-sourced RISC computing without breaking my bank is an amazing prospect, as I understand that you can only interpret certain parts of an ARM CPU due to executive meddling, where compiling would give great performance boosts.
I am excited to see Risc-V stuff as well and it is new to me
App startup lags are there because they are snaps, thanks to canonical
As the first (maybe?) to arrive on the market, this laptop paves the way for some very interesting developments. However, I have to confess to shedding a little tear: I've always had the fantasy that a laptop built around a Raspberry Pi CM-4 would eventually become available on the market... Shame! But congratulations on this latest product, and thanks for the excellent presentation!
I was expecting an RPi Pico 2 video.
I've yet to get my hands on one!
This is shockingly good. I don't think I could switch for my daily usage yet but it isn't too far off. Needs much better media acceleration for instance.
right next to the button, who came up with that?
Sadly this is not the first time I've seen this layout.
Is that a problem ? They are pretty big and far away from the center, I don't think you'd easily hit it accidentally.
As always, a very well done informative video. Thank you very much Chris, for educating us with your RISC-V videos.
where's the coffee cup holder?
I think this important feature is being held back for the DC-ROMA III.
It is impossible to feel grateful and depressed in the same moment.
Please explain your emotions. Isnt this a huge win for all of us.
It's a really long way for RISC-V becoming mainstream.
Going much faster than ARM though, for sure
It might have a spot in another ten years!!!!!
The way MS and intel are trending… maybe sooner 😅
I didnt think id see a risc v laptop for a at least a few years. good stuff :)
OK but why not sysbench testing for the CPU?
Jeff gerling recent video got bad results, and he argued sysbench is not very conclusive here because closed source
@@RafaCoringaProducoes OK then some other CPU benchmark. This is all about the CPU after all. Not the disk or the GPU. And the CPU seems a bit sluggish so it's worth quantifying the performance.
This was really cool to see, would be interesting to see the history of why RiscV seems to have had less adoption than arm despite the licensing fees of arm seeming like a large cost for businesses to swallow.
100 dollar for extra 8gb ram, sounds like a apple thing to do
Yes, but i guess it can be because the demand for 16gb ram version is low, economies of scale you know.
8 gb of ram is good for such low power CPU. (Remember that each core is only 20% faster than a Cortex A55)
I'm always happy to see a non-x86 laptop. There's been PowerPC and even Moto68K laptops and of course tons of ARM laptops, but this might be the first normal looking RISC-V laptop I've seen, though I definitely appreciate the small handheld laptops I've been seeing. I'd love to see more laptops with a debug interface on the side like that.
I'll quit smoking and buy me one. :)
Good luck! :D