Milk-V Mars: RISC-V credit card size SBC

[krilovsky]

This is definitely not the first RISC-V SBC at this size (the Sipeed Nezha SBC[0] launched over two years ago based on the Allwinner D1, and the ARIES FIVEBerry[1] launched almost a month ago based on the Renesas RZ/Five). It's not even the first SBC with that specific SoC, as StarFive (the company behind the JH7110 SoC used by this SBC) launched the VisionFive 2 SBC[2] on KickStarter back in September, and Pine64 had the STAR64 since last year as well.

As for PoE support, the presence of the 4-pin header on the board suggests that it's optional, and requires the help of something like the PoE+ HAT[3], same as on the VisionFive 2 and the RPi.

[0] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nezha-your-first-64bit-ri...

[1] https://www.aries-embedded.com/evaluation-kit/cpu/rzfive-ren...

[2] https://www.starfivetech.com/en/site/boards

[3] https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/poe-plus-hat/

[brucehoult]

If you want to talk about customers actually receiving stuff, rather than announcements or taking preorders, then the timing is:

- Nezha: late June / early July 2021

- VisionFive 2: February 2023

- Star64: May 2023

The PineTab-V also uses the JH7110. It was supposed to ship late May at the same time as the (very similar) A55-based PineTab2, but according to the company they found something they wanted to fix before shipping. Hopefully soon! My VF2 that arrived in February was supposed to have been in November, and the Star64 was scheduled to ship in December, so slips of a few months are just in the nature of the industry, especially at this time.

[PlutoIsAPlanet]

How does it boot?

Or is RISC-V going to follow the same problems as the ARM SBC system where each board has an obscure and unique boot process meaning images need to be carefully pre-built with who knows what installed for each board.

[jchw]

I don't know about interrupts/device tree/etc. but at least for the boot process itself, UEFI/EDK2 was ported to RISC-V. (I actually learned this because I was looking up information about the Windows PE format and was surprised to see relocations support for RISC-V; they needed to add support for it to the PE specification since PE is the native binary format of UEFI!)

[camel-cdr]

I'm not certain, but I think that's what opensbi is for: https://github.com/riscv-software-src/opensbi

[snvzz]

>is RISC-V going to follow the same problems as the ARM SBC system where each board has an obscure and unique boot process meaning images need to be carefully pre-built with who knows what installed for each board.

No. Instead, RISC-V standardized the boot process early on, avoiding that situation.

[synergy20]

there are so many SBCs these days.

if you use them for hobby projects, many of them are fine.

if you ever want to convert your project to something commercial, I would still consider raspberry pi and beaglebone instead based on software maturity and community support and their ecosystem at large.

I really like NXP's i.MX6/8/9 chips, I wish there are some i.MX SBCs as popular as RPi and Beagles, for both hobby and commercial applications.

[squarefoot]

> if you ever want to convert your project to something commercial, I would still consider raspberry pi and beaglebone

Last time I checked, Broadcom forced you to integrate their compute modules into your product because there was no way they would sell their CPUs alone, no matter how many of them one would be willing to buy. That is not normal in the industrial world. As an example, the Allwinner H3 used in a lot of boards is $5 each for 1000+ pieces at Alibaba, or $10 at Olimex in the EU in single quantity. It's also well documented. https://linux-sunxi.org/H3

Things may be different with the RP2040, which is a very interesting part, but that chip has nothing in common, except the name, with the ones running the bigger Linux capable Raspberries.

[freedomben]

I would tend to agree, but the supply limitations of the Pis has made me re-think that. I've heard with commercial agreements you can sometimes get Pis easier, but for launching a new product I'd be terrified that my growth would be hampered/limited by availability of the Pi

[selectronics]

>if you ever want to convert your project to something commercial, I would still consider raspberry pi and beaglebone instead based on software maturity and community support and their ecosystem at large.

Seconding this for the Beaglebone Black (including the Industrial variant). FreeBSD support and onboard Ethernet set it apart from some alternatives.

[RobotToaster]

>if you ever want to convert your project to something commercial

Surely at that point you would just treat the SBC as a reference design and fab your own boards?

[leonheld]

> I wish there are some i.MX SBC

You can buy a Toradex, Variscite or PHYTEC module and pop a binary distro like Debian in there very easily.

Disclosure: I work for one of the companies above.

[xhrpost]

I feel like there are ton of SBC designs out there. Many are still in Kickstarter/Launch phase. Others are sold-out. And the few that aren't sold out are selling for much higher than their reference price.

[c_o_n_v_e_x]

There are quite a few manufacturers who offer NXP ARM SoC based modules. Variscite, Compulab, and SolidRun just to name a few.

[f001]

I love the PoE support! I wish more SBCs and even nuc/nuc-clones would start adding support! It’s nice being able to consolidate power supplies/deploying to places where only ethernet is present (which anyone can deploy legally unlike AC wires)

[adriancr]

although not ideal, external gigabit POE splitters are ~10 euros

[accrual]

This is super cool! It has a little bit of everything I'd want in a small project board - PoE, mini PCIe, RPi case compatibility, lots of RAM.

OpenBSD has some support for the StarFive chip, so perhaps this device could run OpenBSD in the future:

https://www.openbsd.org/riscv64.html

[lvturner]

Quite excited by this whole line up, the Pioneer ( https://milkv.io/pioneer ) looks interesting too.

I really hope they can pull this all off. I've ordered a couple of the MlikV-Duos should arrive in the next week or so, let's see how things go!

[IshKebab]

Thickest credit card I've ever seen!

[sschueller]

Yes, I am quite disappointed because I thought from the headline that it would actually fit in my wallet.

[cosmiccatnap]

It's not available to purchase. I have yet to see affordable and consistant RISCV hardware availability just breadcrumbs leading to preorders or coming soon or something that costs 500$

[KerrAvon]

has video, usb & ethernet. missing price & benchmarks, though

[snvzz]

Isn't it JH7110 like VisionFive2?

That board shipped in February. There's plenty about it.

I have one. On release a few benchmarks were made, but be careful that driver improvements and newer GCC versions (it shipped with a Debian built with a really old GCC) have improved performance dramatically since then.

Firefox and Chrome have also gained JS JIT, which makes web browsing fast.

[meepmorp]

Apparently not recently discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377439

[glutamate]

Different board, same company

[mandelken]

I wonder what graphics chip this is using?

[gh02t]

Looks to be Imagination BXE-4-32 GPU, courtesy of https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/08/29/starfive-jh7110-risc... .

[sylware]

Overkill for my keyboard controller, but finally I get 40 GPIOs with native RV64.

[m00x]

You'd get better latency out of an ESP32-S2 or even a CH569 MCU.

[2Gkashmiri]

Is this available in India? I'd buy but won't risk the customs dance.

[appleflaxen]

What happens with customs if you buy something like this?

[nullc]

The cores still lack bitmanip/clz/ctz/clmul. :(

[brucehoult]

JH7110 has Zba, Zbb. So not clmul, but yes clz, popcount, etc.

[snvzz]

AIUI they got Zba and Zbb.

I expect next batch of cores to be full RVA22+V.

[BasedAnon]

How does this thing stack up against the Pine64's Ox64?

[rjsw]

The linked system uses the same SoC as the Pine64 STAR64, so it will be a lot faster than a Pine64 Ox64, the Milk-V Duo is similar to the Ox64.

[st3fan]

Is it available? No.

[notorandit]

Coming soon...

[imtringued]

All SBCs are useless to me...

How am I supposed to encode vp8 in real time with them?

[CyberDildonics]

All desktop computers are useless to me...

How am I supposed to fit one in my pocket?

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Not every machine is suited to every usecase. It might not be useful to you for the one specific use you've picked, but it's still useful to a lot of people.

[vbezhenar]

Build a kubernetes cluster out of them and deploy pods which would encode one frame at a time. Then you just need to map-reduce. Easy!