Sipeed Lichee Pi 4A RISC-V SBC review and Debian demo. This is the first RISC-V computer I’ve tested that's provided a usable desktop computing experience right out of the box. End-user RISC-V is starting to arrive! :)
You can learn more about the Lichee Pi 4A on its web page here:
https://sipeed.com/licheepi4a
And the board has excellent documentation here:
https://wiki.sipeed.com/licheepi4a.html
Note that the hardware I used in this video was purchased from AliExpress:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10050...
I have reviewed four previous RISC-V SBCs, including the StarFive VisionFive 2, which also (after some messing around) provides a good desktop experience:
• VisionFive 2: RISC-V Quad Core Low Co...
I also have an 2023 update on RISC-V developments here:
• RISC-V 2023 Update: From Embedded Com...
And my general introduction to RISC-V is here:
• Explaining RISC-V: An x86 & ARM Alter...
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:45 Unboxing
03:33 Specifications
07:26 First Boot
10:37 Debian Demo
18:10 Another Milestone
Listen, listen. Listen.
No. Shut the fuck up. Listen
Dual gigabit Ethernet ports.
If you don’t need 10g speeds, this is a sick little pfSense/OpenSense board.
I’m only vaguely familiar with risc-v. What is the current state of running containers on it? Can I just spin up an existing x86 or arm container? Or is this a new build target that some images may not support yet?
If your container target
—platform
is the same as your bare metal ( or VM, but that’s not what we’re talking about): works great.If they’re not the same, docker needs a virtualization layer to work, since the kernel of the host machine OS cannot be trivially shared with the container.