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The Framework Laptop 13 is about to become one of the world’s first RISC-V laptops
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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This board has the StarFive JH7110 SoC. That processor has previously been in very low power single board computers like StarFive VisionFive 2 (2022) and Milk-V Mars (2023), a Raspberry Pi clone that can be bought for as low as $40. Its storage limitations (SD/eMMC rather than NVMe) show how much this isn't meant for laptop use.
Very underpowered for a laptop too, even when considering this is intended for developers and doesn't need to be remotely performance competitive. Consider that this has just 4 RV64GC cores, the cheapest Intel board options Framework offers are 12 cores (4P+8E), and any modern RISC-V core is far simpler with less area than even an Intel E core. These cores also lack the RISC-V vector instructions extension.
Pine64 also has the Star64 as will, in 4GB and 8GB for $70 and $90 respectively. They're not exactly hard to find.
If I was developing for RISC-V, I'd buy one of those SBCs, not a Framework laptop. But it's cool that it exists, I suppose.
You don't need a laptop to use a framework mainboard, they run without battery and display and everything. So if you have a Framework 13 or are in the market for one this might actually be a very nice thing, especially if the price is comparable to other boards.
I guess? But why would you swap to RISC-V from their x86 boards? It'll be slower and less compatible.
I can see it for devs, but they're going to want a separate laptop or an SBC, they're not going to be swapping mainboards on the regular.
I'm considering it as a second laptop option, but I have a particular niche use case: I'm a developer who writes developer tools and is currently trying to ensure we have first-class RISC-V support.
This is probably what I'll go for if I buy in the next month though: https://liliputing.com/dc-roma-laptop-ii-packs-an-octa-core-risc-v-processor-16gb-of-ram-and-ubuntu-linux/
Hooking up a BananaPi to a keyboard+monitor is going to be quite a bit cheaper, and unlike with the framework laptop you can't re-use case, monitor, etc. with an upgraded board.
It would, but I already have several dev boards I use in that configuration. What I'm looking for now is something I can take with me to use as a semi-daily driver so I can start reporting bugs in real world use cases.
You can develop using it as an SBC, then put it into the laptop when you go to a conference to present your stuff. Or if you really want to code in the park it's not like it'd be a microcontroller, it is fast enough to run an editor and compiler.
But granted it's a hassle to switch out the mainboard. OTOH you can also use the x86 board as an SBC so when you're at home it doesn't really matter which board happens to be inside.
I guess from framework's POV there's not much of an argument, it's less "do people want potato laptops" but "do we want to get our feet wet with RISC-V and the SBC market". Nobody actually needs to use it in a laptop for the whole thing to make sense to them.