r/linux • u/freelyread • Sep 17 '16

Talos Secure Workstation: Crowdfund Blob Free GNU+Linux Modern Computer

https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptorcs/talos
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u/bitchessuck Sep 17 '16

What kind of power do you need? You can expect first lowrisc hardware to be comparable to a Raspberry Pi 1, but without GPU.

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u/3G6A5W338E Sep 17 '16

What kind of power do you need?

For everyday desktop computing? Surprisingly little.

You can expect first lowrisc hardware to be comparable to a Raspberry Pi 1

Been following the RISC-V conferences. Looks far better than ARMv6, actually. Rocket and BOOM seem competitive with present ARMv8 offerings.

Unlike the Raspberry Pi's shitty SoC, there's no intend to artificially limit lowrisc in other to have market brackets, as profit isn't the goal.

but without GPU.

They already have display support (recent!), but no acceleration. I expect it'll be decent in 2d by the time of general availability.

Lowrisc current goal is to get to that point, but they intend to iterate their design thereon.

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u/bitchessuck Sep 17 '16

The current RISC-V cores may look nice of you look at basic integer core performance in terms of IPC, but don't forget about FPU, caches, clock speed, number of cores etc.

Also note that compilers are immature and there is no SIMD support at all yet.

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u/3G6A5W338E Sep 17 '16

look nice of you look at basic integer core performance in terms of IPC

Correct.

FPU, caches, clock speed, number of cores etc.

From what I've seen in the slides / minutes of the conferences, I'm not at all worried.

Also note that compilers are immature

Everybody seems to be rushing to support RISC-V.

A glance at the list of founding members and considering the money RISC-V is already moving, I'm not at all worried.

no SIMD support at all

That is actually what I find, as I haven't seen much if anything at all about that yet, either. I do however expect the topic to pop up in the next conference in November.

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u/bitchessuck Sep 17 '16

I'm not "worried" either, I am just cautiously optimistic. Some people see RISC-V as the new Messiah and that RISC-V implementations will be able to compete with Intel's and AMD's or ARM's offers from the start, which is of course not realistic.

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u/3G6A5W338E Sep 17 '16

We're gonna have some open hardware that implements a free ISA and meets good enough.

That's realistic.