Move over, ARM: BeagleV is a $150 RISC-V computer designed to run Linux

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  This overhead view of a BeagleV system shows off the CPU (center), 4x USB 3.0 ports (far left), gigabit Ethernet (top left), and 40-pin GPIO (bottom). [credit: Seeed ]

Seeed Studios-the makers of the Odyssey mini-PC we reviewed back in August-have teamed up with well-known SBC vendor BeagleBoard to produce an affordable RISC-V system designed to run Linux.

The new BeagleV (pronounced "Beagle Five") system features a dual-core, 1GHz RISC-V CPU made by StarFive-one of a network of RISC-V startups created by better-known RISC-V vendor SiFive. The CPU is based on two of SiFive's U74 Standard Cores-and unlike simpler microcontroller-only designs, it features a MMU and all the other trimmings necessary to run full-fledged modern operating systems such as Linux distributions.

StarFive's VIC7100 processor design is aimed at edge AI tasks as well as general-purpose computing. In addition to the two RISC-V CPU cores, it features a Tensilica Vision VP6 DSP for machine-vision applications, a Neural Network Engine, and a single-core NVDLA (Nvidia Deep Learning Accelerator) engine.

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