World's First Risc-V Laptop Preloaded With Ubuntu
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
DeepComputing has announced a successor to its Roma laptop, which was the first notebook of its kind to use a RISC-V-compatible processor.
Called DC-Roma RISC-V Laptop II, the device is claimed to be the first RV-based laptop in the world to run Ubuntu out of the box. It's not the first RISC-V laptop to use Linux in general as the original Roma came with Alibaba's own Linux-based OS, OpenAnolis. However, given that Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distributions, it's certainly a milestone for the upcoming instruction set architecture (ISA).
"As RISC-V is becoming a competitive ISA in multiple markets, porting Ubuntu to RISC-V to become the reference OS for early adopters was a natural choice," Ubuntu developer Canonical said in a statement.
DeepComputing's second RISC-V laptop features a SoC from a relatively obscure Chinese firm, SpacemiT. This isn't unusual for DeepComputing, which is based in Hong Kong and previously relied on an SoC from StarFive, a different Chinese chip designer, for the original Roma laptop.
That might sound strange to anyone following developments in RISC-V laptops, since it was initially reported even by RISC-V International itself that the Roma laptop used a chip from Alibaba. However, as far as The Register can tell, Roma shipped with StarFive's JH7110, which features a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz, an integrated GPU made by Imagination, and no neural processing unit (NPU) at all, despite what DeepComputing's official product page says.
[...] Additionally, the 2 TOPS NPU doesn't seem like it can really back up Canonical's claims of "powerful AI capabilities." For reference, 2 TOPS is small even compared to the old Google Edge TPU with its 4 TOPS, and nowhere near Hailo's latest, low-end Hailo-8L, which features in the Raspberry Pi AI Kit.
[...] Regardless of actual performance, DeepComputing and Canonical can at least claim to have achieved a first, one that's especially important for RISC-V's ambitions in the PC market. RISC-V has to start somewhere, and being able to offer the full Linux experience in a regular laptop is a significant step.
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