It’s not RISC-V ‘gunning’ for RPi, it’s certain SBC manufacturers who think that a RISC-V board will enable them to compete with RPi.
It may, but the success of these boards will largely depend on other factors. RPi has succeeded because of their clear focus and really strong execution.
It will probably disappoint many but having a CPU with an open ISA isn’t going to be an overriding factor in determining whether any particular SBC succeeds in the market.
I like the idea, but they need to make the chip actually open so decent drivers can be created. Most non-Pi SBCs are terribly hard to get working.
I would strongly recommend that Raspberry Pi explore a RISC-V line of SBCs. They already have established that they are not locked to ARM with the recent Pico device (https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico/), so they might as well do a RISC-V line.
RISC-V is much more open than ARM, but it is definitely lacking in performance and widespread support (and integrated GPU?.) Thus do not dump the ARM line, but add an alternative so as this market further develops, Raspberry Pi is there.
(I found this: https://abopen.com/news/raspberry-pi-foundation-announces-ri...)
What is a "RISC-V gun"?
> 40-pin GPIO Header (28 x GPIO, 12C, 12S, SPI, UART)
12C and 12S - two of my favorite buses!
Are those things really retyped by hand?
Oh, thank goodness! For second, I thought someone was hacking into firearms.
Is there an objective reason to prefer RISC-V over some POWERx generation?
If you were designing a chip to go into a high-end-ish product, would basing it on POWER cause you any greater difficulty than RISC-V?
For a great overview of the SiFive that's highlighted in this article, check out Explaining Computers' video from May: https://youtu.be/4PoWAsBOsFs
tl;dr the dual core processor is quite slow, but relatively stable running the software that can compile for it so far in Linux.
It seems like Vision Five is at least pushing things forward a bit on the software side, unlike some of the other hardware manufacturers of SBCs.
It's all about the peripherals. Make them not suck and document them well and you could have a chance. Follow ESP32's lead and you'll just be another also-ran.
I am still looking for a shmall board with a USB-C connector and tons of GPIOs, with a RISC-V _64bits_ SOC (for keyboards/mice/etc).
Why is "Guns" capitalized if the word is being used as a verb? Anybody else wonder for a moment what guns have a CPU architecture style? LOL Nobody else? Ok, carry on.
Good! We need more small systems. Not just CPUs-on-a-board for hackers to prototype with but an alternative to Intel NUCs and smaller fully integrated computers with inexpensive low power CPUs.
It's astonishing to me how behind the ARM ecosystem is on this. I still can't buy something like a low-end amd64 computer easily with ARM. There's a few laptops and a few cantankerous oddballs like the ROCKPro64. Then again it's Pine64 mentioned in the RISC V article, so maybe we have more years of oddballs to go.