Miniature RISC-V Developer Laptop Looks Like a Lenovo ThinkPad Clone | Tom's Hardware
Miniature RISC-V Developer Laptop Looks Like a Lenovo ThinkPad Clone | Tom's Hardware
Who left the ThinkPad in the dryer too long?
Why is everything RISC-V some low power device, I want a workstation with PCIe 5.0 powered by RISC-V.
I think that's the whole point of all risc - it saves power over cisc but may take longer to compute some tasks.
That'd be why things like phones with limited batteries often prefer risc.
That's true for small and simple microcontrollers, but larger and more complicated ones can theoretically implement macro operation fusion in hardware to get similar benefits as CISC architectures
milk-v is going to release a pretty powerful system, iirc i read it will be released in about 10 months, ventana also reportedly will release a server cpu in 2024.
It takes time, as it all is under heavy development. Just since very recently there are risc v sbc available that can run linux - before it was pretty much microcontrollers only. Be patient :)
That's promising at least :)
It's probably what's available without costing several kidneys.
Risc-v is still 50% slower than an unisoc SOC.
RISC-V is advancing pretty quickly. I imagine we'll see desktop class CPUs within a decade.
There is the 64 core, 32-128GB DDR4 Milk-V Pioneer, but it uses PCIe 4.0
Me too. Hell, I'd settle for a multi-core RV64GC processor offered as a bare chip and socket since I've always wanted to give building a motherboard a try but, the dev systems available seem to have everything soldered :(
Even once the kinks are worked out, the primary market for RISC-V will be low-end. It's a FOSS (FOSH?) upgrade path from 8-bit and 16-bit ISAs.
There will be no reason for embedded systems to use ARM.
Initial market, absolutely. It's already there at this point. Low power 32-bit ARM SoC MCUs have largely replaced the 8-bit and 16-bit AVR MCUs, as well as MIPS in new designs. They've just been priced so well for performance and relative cost savings on the software/firmware dev side (ex. Rust can run with its std library on Espressif chips, making development much quicker and easier).
With ARM licensing looking less and less tenable, more companies are also moving to RISC-V from it, especially if they have in-house chip architects. So, I also suspect that it will supplant ARM in such use cases - we're already seeing such in hobbyist-oriented boards, including some that use a RISC-V processor as an ultra-low-power co-processor for beefier ARM multi-core SoCs.
That said, unless there's government intervention to kill RISC-V, under the guise of chip-war (but really likely because of ARM "campaign contributions"), I suspect that we'll have desktop-class machines sooner than later (before the end of the decade).
Does the trackpoint work like an old IBM thinkpad? If so this would be a really neat computer.
It's called a nipple. And yes.
We call it the clito in France, I have one on my Lenovo keyboard
Do you have one? The Thinkpad trackpoint was great but no other company that put a "nub/nipple" on their laptops was as good. I think IBM put a lot of effort into that device and whatever knockoffs Dell, HP etc were using were clumsy and uncomfortable in comparison.
Are netbooks making a comeback?
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Man, I hope. I haven't had as much fun on a computer as I did with my eepc701.
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Loved my netbook back in the day. put major hours into roblox on that bih
Does it run GNU/Linux?
Yup they have an image based on Debian
I need one of these right now.
Debian supports risc-v
Does RISC-V have security benefits since it is open source? Is it easier to detect hardware backdoors if it is used instead of x86 or ARM?
RISC-V instruction set (ISA) is open source. But the actual implementation (microarchitecture) has no such obligations. And among the implementations that can run Linux, none (that I know) are open source designs.
With regards to hardware backdoors - no, closed source RISC-V implementations are not easier than x86 or ARM to audit for security.
I think the CPU chips themselves are closed source but the architecture is open under MIT so this means anyone can close them
Hmmm I wonder if it's possible to hack together that tiny keyboard together with a Steam Deck...
The Pad 4A is a bit more interesting to me. 1280x800 is really awful in 2023. But the pad 4A has a 10" 1920x1200 display which would be so much nicer in a small form factor laptop.
While I agree with you with the 16:10 display being nicer, in terms of size. 1280x800 isn't bad once you take into consideration of screen size. Like the ppi for both displays are in the low 200s. A 1080p 15.6 in display has a lower ppi than both of those.
To me it’s less about the PPI and more the ability to fit things on the screen.
1280x800 is just small enough that that certain elements might not fit on the screen. Or if they do they just barely fit with no wiggle room. 1920x1200 is probably unreadable to even freaks like me (I run 150% scaling on a 16” 4K display) but it gives me the option to turn off/down scaling and actually fit things when needed.
I use a 1280x800 on my steamdeck and honestly its fine for 90% of stuff as long as it can scale properly. Am I the only person who ran a 720p monitor back when people were just getting into 4k?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Known as the Lichee Console 4A, the laptop features a display size of just 7 inches, 16GB of memory, and an LM4A TH1520 processor.
Despite its small size, the Lichee Console 4A packs the features and functionality that you'd generally expect from a mainstream x86 laptop in this price range: LPDDR4X memory, 128GB of eMMC storage, and an optional external NGFF SSD.
Display-wise, the video resolution of the 7-inch display is 1280 x 800 featuring capacitive touch touchscreen support, plus a mini HDMI port for external monitor output.
There's also a 2MP front camera that should suffice for basic web calling.
Additionally, there's also a microSD slot reader, which can expand the device's storage on top of what it already has.
Other miscellaneous specs include a battery capacity of 3000mAh, RedPoint (seemingly a copy of Lenovo's TrackPoint), a 72-key keyboard, an aluminum outer shell, and a weight of 650 grams.
The original article contains 295 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Any estimation on the battery life?