World’s first RISC-V laptop | ROMA | Deepcomputing | ChromeOS

[snappercayt]

Summary

TL;DR is Deepcomputing said they would be launching ROMA in Q1 2023 and they are almost there, with Chrome OS coming soon and OpenKylin demo(rather buggy) but working with IPS 1080p display, fingerprint sensor, 4G, USB-C and keeping the 3.5mm headphone jack in place! 

 

Quotes

Quote

"Roma is very buggy, slow but it will get better and so will RISC-V"

 

Specs:

• 1080p IPS display
• waterproof backlit keyboard with a RISC-V key instead of super or windows key
• Core CPU board with 4GB RAM, 16GB storage, dual core GPU and 4 core CPU
• Main board with IO starting with WiFi, DC, HDMI,  USB-A 3.0 then USB-C
• Touch pad with fingerprint sensor
• Sub board for additional IO like sim card, usd card, USB-A 3.0, possibly Gigabit LAN
• Battery: 48WH nothing fancy

My thoughts

Great attempt to jump in a market with 0 competitors and taking time with software while using the university resources to promote open source ideas, using the Open Source Operating System Technical Conference as the platform to showcase how far they have come was important.

 

 

 

Sources

 1. https://deepcomputing.io/roma-product-launch/

 2. their twitter 

 

[porina]

First laptop? Or first shipping laptop? Is it shipping yet? I know others had been announced in the past, but don't know if they ever shipped.

 

Edit: in a quick search for "risc-v laptop" first couple of pages of hits were previous news about the same Roma laptop being "available". I know I saw at least one other which isn't this one, but it isn't showing up so far.

[snappercayt]

6 minutes ago, porina said:

First laptop? Or first shipping laptop? Is it shipping yet? I know others had been announced in the past, but don't know if they ever shipped.

 

Edit: in a quick search for "risc-v laptop" first couple of pages of hits were previous news about the same Roma laptop being "available". I know I saw at least one other which isn't this one, but it isn't showing up so far.

not sure shipping or not, I don't know what to do with this link I been seeing for many days

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DC-ROMA-RISCV-Laptop-Dev-Board_1600610157163.html?spm=a2747.manage.0.0.7bc871d2qKDfEF

[ouroesa]

11 hours ago, snappercayt said:

usd card

Gotta love that USD card.

[Arika]

Maybe I'm weird, but RISC-V doesn't doesn't seem that special, but everyone else seems to have a hardon for it.

[williamcll]

chrome is going to destroy that ram

[snappercayt]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

Maybe I'm weird, but RISC-V doesn't doesn't seem that special, but everyone else seems to have a hardon for it.

it is also a historical moment with a new architecture just like 8086 days, everyone thinks they will come out on the top

[snappercayt]

3 hours ago, ouroesa said:

Gotta love that USD card.

they showcase TF-card but I wanted to use micro SD and at the time of writing my brain said I should save 4 characters....so usd

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

Maybe I'm weird, but RISC-V doesn't doesn't seem that special, but everyone else seems to have a hardon for it.

Open source, open architecture, license free, royalty free etc blah blah. Soon as it actually becomes important in the industry and market and becomes performance competitive silicon companies will start adding proprietary accelerators and other components over top of it and patent/trademark that stuff just as much as it happen every other time.

 

  

 

It's pretty naïve to think it won't happen.

[mr moose]

9 hours ago, Arika S said:

 but everyone else seems to have a hardon for it.

People always get a hardon for the easy root,  but they never learn hat the easy root comes with consequences and never has any lasting joy.

[hishnash]

I think one of the things people commonly mistake with RISC-V is while the instruction set is open source and some chip designs are open source most (if not all) shipping RISC-V chips themselves (the transistor layout, tooling masks etc) are not open source since building this is very very costly.  For someone currently licensing ARM-cortex cores RISC-V is not much different they are still going to need to find someone with an actual useful core design and license it $$$.   The open source nature of RISC-V is realy only a benefit for the massive supper corporations like Qualcomm, apple, Nvidia who have the RND budgets to take the instruction set and basic open source parts and build thier own micro arc.  

Sure the hope with this core part being open source is that there will be multi micro-arc vendors out there licensing out designs rather than just ARM (while you can license the arm instruction set and build your own arc using it I believe those licenses strictly forbid you from licensing out that micro arc and competing with the cortex line). 

[porina]

14 minutes ago, hishnash said:

I think one of the things people commonly mistake with RISC-V is while the instruction set is open source and some chip designs are open source most (if not all) shipping RISC-V chips themselves (the transistor layout, tooling masks etc) are not open source since building this is very very costly.  For someone currently licensing ARM-cortex cores RISC-V is not much different they are still going to need to find someone with an actual useful core design and license it $$$.   The open source nature of RISC-V is realy only a benefit for the massive supper corporations like Qualcomm, apple, Nvidia who have the RND budgets to take the instruction set and basic open source parts and build thier own micro arc.  

Mostly this, but I think there is more scaling to it than we're used to with Arm or x86. For now in particular it seems to scale down more, so we're more likely to not know we have it as an embedded controller in products going forwards. WD went this route: https://blog.westerndigital.com/risc-v-swerv-core-open-source/

 

So maybe high end high performance cores will come out of the bigger companies, with a price to match, but there is more room in the lower to mid range for smaller players to join in.

 

Also saw an argument that made sense to me, that in academic areas it'll be the tool of choice because of the separation from a for-profit organisation. Wont be overnight but it seems inevitable it is the next thing.

[Doobeedoo]

Seems risky.

[suicidalfranco]

13 hours ago, Arika S said:

Maybe I'm weird, but RISC-V doesn't doesn't seem that special, but everyone else seems to have a hardon for it.

Given the recent change to arm licensing deals, a new architecture is more than welcome

[snappercayt]

I found this later when I was going though the Embedded World 2023 news, 

 

they are using the TH1520 CPU by Alibaba

https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/10/04/alibaba-t-head-th1520-risc-v-processor-to-power-the-roma-laptop/

[igormp]

On 3/27/2023 at 2:07 AM, leadeater said:

Open source, open architecture, license free, royalty free etc blah blah. Soon as it actually becomes important in the industry and market and becomes performance competitive silicon companies will start adding proprietary accelerators and other components over top of it and patent/trademark that stuff just as much as it happen every other time.

 

  

 

It's pretty naïve to think it won't happen.

It's already happening. RISC-V is not really that relevant for consumers, it's relevant for companies, since you can do your own derivative design without paying royalties, while also having a ISA that most software already supports. You don't need to make your own designs open source, so your end-consumers get no transparency whatsoever.

 

Still, I do like RISC-V as an ISA, it's really simple and really similar to MIPS.

 

On 3/27/2023 at 8:25 AM, porina said:

ostly this, but I think there is more scaling to it than we're used to with Arm or x86. For now in particular it seems to scale down more, so we're more likely to not know we have it as an embedded controller in products going forwards. WD went this route: https://blog.westerndigital.com/risc-v-swerv-core-open-source/

Nvidia is also using RISC-V for their Falcon CPUs (the controller found inside modern GPUs that takes care of the firmware stuff).