> RISC-V is heralded by many as “the next big thing” since it is an open and royalty-free ISA, but it has been a sort of red-haired stepchild for a long time, in the sense that it has always been much slower and gotten less overall industry support than ARM.
I really don't understand why people say things like this. You don't see every review of an Arm SBC lamenting how far behind Intel/AMD Arm is.
ARM has been around for decades, the ARMv8.0-A ISA implemented by the Cortex-A72 in the Pi 4 was published in 2011 and the ARMv8.2-A ISA used in the Cortex-A55 and A76 (RK3588) was published in 2017.
The Pi 4 appeared in 2019 8 years after its ISA was published, the RK3588 machines started to appear in 2022 (and the Pi 5 in 2023) which is 5-6 years after the ARMv8.2-A ISA was published.
Nothing wrong with that ... it is typical.
This Orange Pi RV2 uses the RVA22+V ISA which was ratified/published in March 2023, just two years ago. Even the original RISC-V specification, RV64GC (now called RVA20) was published in mid 2019, less than six years ago.
Arm has decades of head start on RISC-V, RISC-V specifications are currently around six years behind equivalent Arm specifications -- even a little less now, as RVA23 was published in October 2024 just 3 1/2 years after ARMv9 which is it essentially equivalent to.
And, if anything, RISC-V boards are coming out sooner after the relevant spec is published than for Arm boards. Especially when you consider that the Banana Pi BPI-F3, with essentially the same SoC as the Orange Pi RV2, has been out for a year.
We've only seen the first ARMv9 SBC in the last two months.
> I would ordinarily use Armbian if this were an ARM board, but that was obviously not an option here.
Armbian is available for the Banana Pi BPI-F3, which uses the same SoC. It'll probably be along for the RV2 shortly.
> pegs the RV2 at about half the performance of a Raspberry Pi 4
I don't know why people compare RISC-V boards like this to the OoO Pi 4. An A53 or A55 board such as the Pi 3 or Odroid C2 or C4 are a much more appropriate comparison as they have very similar µarch. Or the various RK3288, RK3566 or Allwinner A523 etc boards.
brucehoult•9mo ago
I really don't understand why people say things like this. You don't see every review of an Arm SBC lamenting how far behind Intel/AMD Arm is.
ARM has been around for decades, the ARMv8.0-A ISA implemented by the Cortex-A72 in the Pi 4 was published in 2011 and the ARMv8.2-A ISA used in the Cortex-A55 and A76 (RK3588) was published in 2017.
The Pi 4 appeared in 2019 8 years after its ISA was published, the RK3588 machines started to appear in 2022 (and the Pi 5 in 2023) which is 5-6 years after the ARMv8.2-A ISA was published.
Nothing wrong with that ... it is typical.
This Orange Pi RV2 uses the RVA22+V ISA which was ratified/published in March 2023, just two years ago. Even the original RISC-V specification, RV64GC (now called RVA20) was published in mid 2019, less than six years ago.
Arm has decades of head start on RISC-V, RISC-V specifications are currently around six years behind equivalent Arm specifications -- even a little less now, as RVA23 was published in October 2024 just 3 1/2 years after ARMv9 which is it essentially equivalent to.
And, if anything, RISC-V boards are coming out sooner after the relevant spec is published than for Arm boards. Especially when you consider that the Banana Pi BPI-F3, with essentially the same SoC as the Orange Pi RV2, has been out for a year.
We've only seen the first ARMv9 SBC in the last two months.
> I would ordinarily use Armbian if this were an ARM board, but that was obviously not an option here.
Armbian is available for the Banana Pi BPI-F3, which uses the same SoC. It'll probably be along for the RV2 shortly.
https://www.armbian.com/download/?arch=riscv64
> pegs the RV2 at about half the performance of a Raspberry Pi 4
I don't know why people compare RISC-V boards like this to the OoO Pi 4. An A53 or A55 board such as the Pi 3 or Odroid C2 or C4 are a much more appropriate comparison as they have very similar µarch. Or the various RK3288, RK3566 or Allwinner A523 etc boards.