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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.
Indeed I bought a Banana Pi BPI-F3 with SpacemiT K1 8 core RISC-V chip,4G RAM and 16G eMMC https://www.banana-pi.org/en/banana-pi-sbcs/175.html for €95.89 including delivery. The form factor is nice though and I do enjoy Framework mission and partnerships. Depends what people need it for, good to have more options than aren't "just" SBC/devboards. I won't buy one now but I'll definitely keep it in mind.
Yup, I'm happy that it exists, I'm just not personality interested.