Steam for Linux only has x86 builds right now and wine only translates system calls, so by default they won't work.
There are ways to get them to work though, but they mostly involve emulating x86. Given the performance of the current state of the art in RISC-V, that won't exactly go well right now.
That said, that's not what this machine is for at all. As a software developer working on developer tools for Linux, this is particularly interesting to me as a way to improve the Linux RISC-V ecosystem while dogfooding my own stuff.
In terms of specifications all I can find is that this has a 2.0GHz 8-core RV64 processor with Vector. That's not a lot of info.
Does anybody know anything more about it? Performance level, battery life, etc. I expect this is really a phone or SBC level processor, so it should sip power, right?
Do not expect this thing to be a daily driver. It's aimed at developers who need a Risc-V testing platform. Very few Software will run on it unless you can spend hours making it compile for Risk-V and lets not talk about drivers. Also it will likely cost over $1000.
I am exited for the future of Risc-V in the consumer space, but we aren't there yet.
Not good. That bench is from a BananaPi with the same SoC, via reddit (sorry).
Maybe about an A55. If you want a performant RISC-V you've gotta wait until stuff leaks out of the European Supercomputer stuff onto the market though that one probably won't have good IPC either unless it's vector, or maybe one of the big chip design companies will grace us with a chip with a RISC-V insn decoder.
You can keep the array processors fed with low IPC and frequency by having absolutely massive vector lengths, the engineering for that kind of processor isn't in the pipeline, branch prediction etc. it's in the APUs and how to stream data into them. Much more like GPUs, in fact RISC-V has instructions for gather/scatter.
Disagree. You quite often have a fair degree of scaler code in between portions which are embarrassingly parallel. If you don't have a decent scaler core you are destined to be become bottlenecked on them. It's not that different to a CPU / GPU pairing. If one is under powered, it determines the speed of the overall system.
If you look at what a company like Tenstorrent is doing, they are designing high performance Risc-V cores as a side aspect of their main goal of doing array processors. The reason is because they couldn't find scaler cores on the market with enough performance to not bottleneck the system.
If they do something like a NUC form factor, I might buy it. I think it would make a decent NAS, but not a great laptop/desktop due to missing software. If it has solid USB-C, I can get a HDD enclosure and be good to go with RISC-V.
Most FLOSS stuff will compile without issue. Practically all the portability issues got sorted out when x86_64 became a thing, stuff gets regularly build for arm32 and arm64, and basically all inline assembly has alternative generic code paths which actually won't be that bad because it's way easier for compilers to output good vector code than it is to output good SIMD code, less room for hand-optimisation.
Once the kernel and drivers are up and running you're good to go because the vast, vast, vast majority of code doesn't care a bit about what CPU it is running on.
While losing money from people who didn't buy frames manufactured by them, yes. That's the point of open source, to let the community have ownership of the design and to make your business model less reliant on intellectual property.
Only reason I didn't switch yet was that my 6 years old Laptop still holds perfectly well and it would be counter productive to just change to a new device for no reason but the brand and that it is new
I'm on an Asus UX410U and he's been going well for 7 years. I'll probably need to replace it this year or next year as the screen is starting to go, but I feel 7 years is pretty good.
currently on a thinkpad t480 and im looking for framework to start shipping their products to the asian market in the next 5 to 10 years as i will be buying from them when this t480 finally kicks the bucket
Same for me, but still no shipping for my country, so I just bought a used T490 which will serve my needs for 4 years and then I'll go for framework; hopefully they are still kicking by then. If shipping was available I would for sure have gone for their 13'' laptop even though it's much more expensive and powerful than I need for personal use.
I like the philosophy and approach from them, but I think one of those Tuxedo ARM notebooks will be my next computer purchase. I’ve been jealous of the speed and battery life of people around me with M-Series MacBooks for a few years now, but unwilling to go to the OS and Asahi isn’t there for me yet.
Here's hoping this helps with getting a thinkpad keyboard into one of these things, I love my t420 to bits but sooner or later I'd like something a bit more efficient
I went with a Thinkpad for my most recent upgrade but I really, really wanted a Framework. If there was a straightforward trackpoint keyboard kit available for the Framework I’d be all in next round. There’s no love lost between Lenovo and I at this point.
Hot sauce! I didn’t know about that. Gonna follow that thread for sure. A laptop with good Linux support, choice of CPU, trackpoint that’s upgradeable and and supports hot pluggable hackable modules! This is the future I want to be in!
Here's the feature request for a TrackPoint on a Framework. Hope they change their mind, because a pointing stick is the most obvious use case for Framework 16's input modules.
To a lot of laptop manufacturers, it certainly seems that way as of late - that's why I'm ever hopeful that a modular laptop, such as the framework, might give us the option of how we want to control a mouse cursor.
I am looking at those kind of devices for a few weeks now because I need to replace my DD-WRT Router with something more powerful and reliable.
I am aiming for those Mini PCs / Appliances with 2+ 2.5GbE network ports and went through dozens of "manufacturers" (many are just putting their label on it) and read hundreds of Forum posts, watched videos etc.
To me it comes down, that they do not differ that much and on my journey so far, these are the things I discovered:
Many manufacturers still implement previous CPU generations. This one has a recent N100, so that´s good. The newer gens are usually more power efficient and produce less heat, so you have higher chances to run them fanless without burning your house down.
If you want 2.5GbE, it is almost always Intel i225 for the older models and i226-V for the newer ones. And those seem to have issues with ASPM, which you need to turn off, depending how you plan to use them. And this adds a few extra Watts.
With many "nameless" China boxes that are actually tested by people in Forums / Videos etc. it happens often, that they have to mod them. They either add fans to them because they get unreasonably hot, or the internals are sloppy built, so that hot components do not even touch the case properly to transmit the head. So be prepared to mod them if you get one you did not found a thorough review yet.
Some build their Boxes still with DDR-4 memory, although they are on a new platform that would support DDR-5. Sometimes you see this in the product description, sometimes you see it when you bought it and opened the box.
For many offers I have seen there is no information about the BIOS/EFI and what you can do there. I have seen / read tests, where you could barely change anything in the BIOS/EFI and are stuck with what the manufacturer configured for you.
With the "nameless" boxes, the biggest issue I have is, that they do not even have proper descriptions of the built in components on their product page. The place where they advertise their product. If this information is not even there, I suspect long-time support and build quality is not better either.
Sometimes the RAM is fixed and you can not change it, but with the sloppy product pages, you sometimes can not see this or it is not that obvious, so pay attention to that if you plan to use it for a long time and might want to upgrade the RAM.
Sometimes you find the exact same hardware just relabeled. I looked at the Thomas Krenn LESv4 for example and found out that it is from Iwill. This is one example where I thought I get it from a German manufacturer and pay a bit extra to support them, but it's just a relabel from a Chinese company. That's not bad of course, just a heads up if you insist on buying something that is not coming from China... which is near impossible anyway in my opinion, because what kind of Electronics is not from there nowadays ;-)
I am following Hardkernel for a while and their new H4 Series seems to tick all the boxes for me at the moment... apart from one: The Case! But they announced a "GC-Style" Case that is injection molded and will post pictures in 2 weeks, so I will wait to see how it looks and how it is built. I love how they nerd out on their Product pages. There is hardly anything you can not find there. They use current technology and offer it for a very fair price. They also seem to pay attention that you have plenty of room to tinker with the settings in their BIOS/EFI and they seem to put quite some though into how they build their stuff, so it also consumes the least amount of energy (which should mean less heat) than others. They even have the guts to host their own Forum, which is a big thing nowadays when you have to fear one Shitstorm after another if you do something that one person does not like. Their H4+ with the Netboard (adds 4 more NICs) and a SSD in a cozy case would be sweet, so I hope the new case they will release soon fits my needs.
That's my 2 cents for today. Sorry for the long post, but since this is a topic I am doing research for myself to get me a good, fast, low energy, low heat hardware for a new OPNsense Firewall :-)
Seems like this could be pretty useful. Probably overkill for my needs, but it's nice that there are affordable fanless computers with this much power for 6W, now. We've come a long way from the Raspberry Pi B I started with!
They claim made in califoria anyway. they don't have any n100 though just slower last generation hardware. Maybe good enough, I'm looking for a jellyfin server now though.
I think nowadays you will hardly find Hardware in that area that is not made in China, no matter where the company sits that sells it. There are a few, sure, but hardly in that price range, unfortunately.
One thing oft overlooked is that alot of manufacturing of computer components is essentially illegal in other countries. Texas Instruments stopped producing in Texas because of Cancer claims/lawsuits and regulatory changes.
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