There's a whole boatload of RISC-V SoCs these days. We'll mostly leave microcontrollers out of this. (Until I don't.)
Allwinner's D1 is used in Mango Pi, LicheeRV family (it's a CM-style card with several hosts), Nezha, Clockwork Pi, DongshanP, i Nezha STUand a bunch of even more generic boards in the $10-$25 range. It's a single core chip running around 1Ghz. The D1-S is 64K which technically can run Linux, but it's pretty uncomfortable. The D1-H can have up to 2GB via external DDR3. There is no GPU. These chips are based on the C906 core from Allwinner's chip division T-Head.
The JH-7100 by StarFive was used in BeagleV and VisionFive Revision 1. Those are about a Ghz per core and that's a two-core part based on SiFive's U74 cores. Revision Two of Vision Five board and Pine64's Star64 board (each ~$50-$100) uses the very recent (like "weeks") JH-7110. It adds an Imagination GPU, cranks the clock to 1.5Ghz and doubles the number of cores. These are higher end boards with richer peripherals. It's early days for these boards with distro improvements every few days, but they're approaching (but won't exceed) the experience of a Pi 4.
The chip used in the laptop you're probablyspeaking of is the TH-1520. TH == T-Head. Since those haven't left the labs yet, the rumored/stated specs are still pretty flud on these, but it seems to be clustering around a 4-core part running around 2.5Ghz. A mostly unheard of company, ROMA, is going to put them in laptops, but RADXHA has shown some interest in them as well. There's some speculation that ROMA's design will be somewhat like the Pinebook which takes an off-the-shelf Pine64 SBC and tests it in a keyboard, trackpad, battery, and display., allowing upgrades when newer "motherboards" come around. This isn't confirmed in ROMA to my knowledge. It would make a lot of sense since RISC-V parts are cranking out generations before a normal battery will wear out, so being able to add a kicker would be nice. Kind of like 7110 being a successor to 7110, these chips are an evolution of a known (obscure, but known) RISC-V part. TH-1520 starts with the T-Head C910 core. (Good students may suspect that this is a familial relative to the C906) There were a low number of those boards available starting around 9 months ago for ~$400. These boards had a GPU and enough RAM that they were used for the early work in porting Chrome and Android. You can still buy one
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803209663707.html, but it's pretty tough to recommend it over the V5R2 or Star64. Like the 7100, the $400 is a bit of a lame duck with its successor already shipping.
On the distant radar ("vaporware" for the cynics) we can see the fuzzy images of:
* the upcoming C908 from T-Head
https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/11/04/t-head-xuantie-c908-risc-v-core-targets-aiot-applications/ * SiFive bringing the U74 designs to modern spec compliance with processing -
https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/11/02/sifive-p670-and-p470-risc-v-processors-add-risc-v-vector-extensions/ * Andes (big core licensor, but not known for shipping CHIPS to end users) with the AndesCore 27VX (old article - chip was COVID-delayed)
https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/12/08/andes-adds-l2-cache-multi-core-support-to-linux-capable-risc-v-cores/ and the out-of-order (more like Pi 4) AX65.
http://www.andestech.com/en/2022/11/02/andes-technology-unveils-the-andescore-ax60-series-an-out-of-order-superscalar-multicore-risc-v-processor-family/. Given how delayed the 27 has been, there's been some speculation that AX65 may lap the 27 and the products just be folded together. Getting dates and product plans from the likes of Andes or SiFive is always tough because they're not chip companies; they license cores to people that build chips.
* And finally, new within the last two weeks or so, Espressif, the ESP32 people, have announced another part to their line, their first RISC-V part that'll run Linux-class OSes, the ESP32-P4:
https://www.hackster.io/news/espressif-s-new-high-performance-risc-v-esp32-p4-soc-packs-in-tons-of-io-and-security-features-12272d4b067eAll of those should be in the $15-$400 range qnd capable of running a recognizable Linux distribution, even if it's only running PiHole/SmokePing, headlessly, in a closet somewhere.
I know I promised to stay out of Microcontrollers, but there are two interesting boards - again, just in the last few weeks - worth mentioning in the $8-$12 range. Bouffalo Labs is using that same 64-bit C-906 used in the lowest-end SoC's, adding a 32-bit E906 core to handle I/O paperwork, feeding USB, WiFi, and such, pairs it with a crazy fast NPU for AI work, and then adds a THIRD RISC-V core, this time an E902. They're able to put this chips onto the Sipeed M1Dock and Pine64's Ox64 boards that range in the $8-$12 block. RAM is limited so you don't want to crack Chrome open on Ubuntu on these, but the NPU is awesome enough to do vision recognition from an attached camera, hand writing or gesture recognition or even facial recognition on something resembling Linux for $10. The Robotics crowd should eat those up.
I think for MOST people that are RISC-V-curious and looking for boards to learn on in approximately the Pi class of products, the JH-7110 Star64/VisionFive boards are the most immediately interesting.
Even with all that typed, it seems like I'm forgetting at least one. Hopefully I've made the point that there are LOTS of choices right now and it's a very quickly moving market.
Now, who's ready to play RISC-V Market Triivial Pursuit, Winter Ekk? :-5kww
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