As per the article: "The biggest difference between the two boars is that the Orange Pi RV has a 1.5 GHz StarFive JH7110 quad-core processor, while the new Orange Pi RV2 has a an octa-core Ky X1 chip with a 2 TOPS AI accelerator."
It has a JH7110 onboard. From what I can tell, all of the vector processing is in dedicated hardware subsystems, not individual vector instructions.
We're still very early in the RISC V ecosystem, so most of the processors in production pre-date current standardizations, which requires applications to target specific silicon. To add insult to injury, those individual processors are relatively new, so the dedicated image processing and vector/tensor hardware doesn't have much support yet.
As per the article: "The biggest difference between the two boars is that the Orange Pi RV has a 1.5 GHz StarFive JH7110 quad-core processor, while the new Orange Pi RV2 has a an octa-core Ky X1 chip with a 2 TOPS AI accelerator."
The link you posted goes to the exact same board as in the article.
The StarFive JH7110 should be fine for that, but there's some lower-power hardware that's even better for your use case.
The Bouffalo Labs BL808 and Sophgo SG2000 series are both asymmetric multiprocessor SoCs that allow you to run a full OS, such as Linux, on one core, and run bare metal on the other. Unlike symmetric multiprocessing, you aren't just running a premptable thread on a spare core, but you get full control of the core, with direct GPIO access and a mailbox for messaging the OS core.
You can set up a development environment in Linux, on the faster core, and compile and run your application on the smaller core, for really fast development and debugging.
Check out the Ox64 and Oz64 boards from Pine64 or the Duo series from Milk-V, for cheap breakout boards using those processors.
If I remember well I did dodge the BL808 as it seems to be very difficult to have a clean RISC-V 64bits kernel to run since the real core is a RISC-V 32bit MCU. It seems to be the same thing with the SG2000.
I may go first with some code extraction and customization from linux, before probably ending with a lot of "hand compiled" linux code.
And yes, lower-power for the moment, since I would first use that for self-hosting.
The BL808 does use a 32-bit core for the secondary core, but the SG2000 series uses the same 64-bit C906 core for both RISC-V cores. The only difference is the reduced clock speed and a lack of vector extensions.
Indeed, it seems there is something about the SG2000, maybe I should have a look at the various boards with it. I don't really mind about the vector extensions right now as I do code RISC-V core only assembly (not even compressed) with near 0 pre-processing (as it should be for all system software, and yes that includes the kernel).
EDIT ---
It seems the SG200X includes an ARM block and this is a definitive nono for me. I want to buy a SOC free from ARM royalties. I tolerate HDMI/mpeg royalties though.
I was excited about Orange Pi ARM but they made an idiotic boot loader that always uses the SD when any SD is present. I think that's unacceptable for an "embedded" thing. This board also has a USB port where plugging in something it doesn't like takes down that entire bus until a reboot.
It's cool to see RISC-V, but I'd go with a different company.
https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/03/08/orange-pi-rv2-low-co... has more info
SoC – Ky X1
Will this run off the mainline kernel? Or will require strange patches from somewhere?
Half the problem with orange pi is lack of main Linux distribution support.
All my (ARM) Orange Pi boards run Armbian just fine. This one, of course, is unlikely to, but I'm curious to see what it ships with.
I know Armbian for the Orange Pi 4 had broken video out for at least a year: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/26818-opi-4-lts-no-hdmi-outp...
Haven't tried it on mine recently so no clue if it's better now.
Based on the listings on taobao (1), it appears to be a Ky X1
1. 【淘宝】https://e.tb.cn/h.Tx3SapHVd5dL2Td?tk=zhC2eNxK64H CZ028 「香橙派Orange Pi开发板RV2八核RISC-V架构双网口WiFi蓝牙双M2接口」 点击链接直接打开 或者 淘宝搜索直接打开
As per the article: "The biggest difference between the two boars is that the Orange Pi RV has a 1.5 GHz StarFive JH7110 quad-core processor, while the new Orange Pi RV2 has a an octa-core Ky X1 chip with a 2 TOPS AI accelerator."
I can not find infos about the Vector-extensions ? Is this cpu/board suitable to test the RISC-V Vector extensions ?
thx for any insights..
It has a JH7110 onboard. From what I can tell, all of the vector processing is in dedicated hardware subsystems, not individual vector instructions.
We're still very early in the RISC V ecosystem, so most of the processors in production pre-date current standardizations, which requires applications to target specific silicon. To add insult to injury, those individual processors are relatively new, so the dedicated image processing and vector/tensor hardware doesn't have much support yet.
This is not JH7110 based.
Yeah, they somehow released a SBC without telling us what processor it contains.
It seems to be the same one as the BananaPi BPI-F3, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/RISCV/comments/1j6c6xz/orange_pi_rv...
As per the article: "The biggest difference between the two boars is that the Orange Pi RV has a 1.5 GHz StarFive JH7110 quad-core processor, while the new Orange Pi RV2 has a an octa-core Ky X1 chip with a 2 TOPS AI accelerator."
The link you posted goes to the exact same board as in the article.
It's not about the article, but the comment from u/12101111:
> It's a cheaper Spacemit K1.
> The CPU spec from dtb:
> compatible = "ky,x60", "riscv"; model = "Ky(R) X60"; riscv,isa = "rv64imafdcv"; riscv,isa-extensions = "i", "m", "a", "f", "d", "c", "v", "zicbom", "zicboz", "zicntr", "zicond", "zicsr", "zifencei", "zihintpause", "zihpm", "zfh", "zfhmin", "zba", "zbb", "zbc", "zbs", "zkt", "zvfh", "zvfhmin", "zvkt", "sscofpmf", "sstc", "svinval", "svnapot", "svpbmt";
> It also have a ARM China Linlon v5 VPU and Imagination IMG GPU. The PMIC and UART is same as K1.
> And the ubuntu image from orangepi just use the same BSP kernel/uboot/opensbi from Spacemit's linux-bianbu.
https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-F3/SpacemiT_K1
It seems likely to be the same as this chip, so yes. https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-F3/SpacemiT_K1
This hardware is very interesting (RISC-V).
Is the hardware open and simple enough I can reasonably run a custom assembly written mini-kernel?
The StarFive JH7110 should be fine for that, but there's some lower-power hardware that's even better for your use case.
The Bouffalo Labs BL808 and Sophgo SG2000 series are both asymmetric multiprocessor SoCs that allow you to run a full OS, such as Linux, on one core, and run bare metal on the other. Unlike symmetric multiprocessing, you aren't just running a premptable thread on a spare core, but you get full control of the core, with direct GPIO access and a mailbox for messaging the OS core.
You can set up a development environment in Linux, on the faster core, and compile and run your application on the smaller core, for really fast development and debugging.
Check out the Ox64 and Oz64 boards from Pine64 or the Duo series from Milk-V, for cheap breakout boards using those processors.
If I remember well I did dodge the BL808 as it seems to be very difficult to have a clean RISC-V 64bits kernel to run since the real core is a RISC-V 32bit MCU. It seems to be the same thing with the SG2000.
I may go first with some code extraction and customization from linux, before probably ending with a lot of "hand compiled" linux code.
And yes, lower-power for the moment, since I would first use that for self-hosting.
The BL808 does use a 32-bit core for the secondary core, but the SG2000 series uses the same 64-bit C906 core for both RISC-V cores. The only difference is the reduced clock speed and a lack of vector extensions.
Here's an English datasheet for the SG2000 series: https://github.com/sophgo/sophgo-doc/releases/download/sg200...
…and for the C906 core itself: https://occ-intl-prod.oss-ap-southeast-1.aliyuncs.com/resour...
Indeed, it seems there is something about the SG2000, maybe I should have a look at the various boards with it. I don't really mind about the vector extensions right now as I do code RISC-V core only assembly (not even compressed) with near 0 pre-processing (as it should be for all system software, and yes that includes the kernel).
EDIT ---
It seems the SG200X includes an ARM block and this is a definitive nono for me. I want to buy a SOC free from ARM royalties. I tolerate HDMI/mpeg royalties though.
I was excited about Orange Pi ARM but they made an idiotic boot loader that always uses the SD when any SD is present. I think that's unacceptable for an "embedded" thing. This board also has a USB port where plugging in something it doesn't like takes down that entire bus until a reboot.
It's cool to see RISC-V, but I'd go with a different company.
Why is that unacceptable?
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