Hopefully this board can also operate in stand-alone mode outside of the framework shell just like the official framework motherboards because then we'd get the best of both worlds while also being able to benefit from the coolermaster case. Regardless, I'm going to order one when it becomes available.

Also stoked to see the open source CAD files for the shell.

And I totally agree; this is the perfect way to try out something like this.

The Sipeed Lichee Console 4A [0] contains the Lichee Module 4A (one of those SBCs on a module like the raspberry pi compute modules) and it looks like the Lichee book 4A is doing the same thing [1]

The DC-Roma 2 [2] appears to be this sbc [3] adapted to a laptop.

The Spacemit Muse Book [4] seems to be the Spacemit Muse pi adapted to a laptop [5]

Banana Pi posted this youtube video [6] showing a laptop with "Banana Pi BPI-F3" in the title which is the name of one of their SBCs. [7]

    [0] https://liliputing.com/lichee-console-4a-is-a-mini-laptop-with-a-risc-v-processor-and-7-inch-display/
    [1] https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/06/19/sipeed-lichee-book-4a-14-inch-modular-linux-laptop-launched-with-th1520-quad-core-risc-v-processor/
    [2] https://store.deepcomputing.io/products/dc-roma-riscv-laptop-ii-with-octa-core-cpu
    [3] https://store.deepcomputing.io/products/risc-v-development-board-spacemit-muse-pi
    [4] https://www.spacemit.com/spacemit-muse/
    [5] https://www.spacemit.com/spacemit-muse-pi/
    [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzod1yUzPhc
    [7] https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-F3

Nope, the intent is I wanted exactly what just happened: swappable board inside a reusable shell. I don't want to get a DC-Roma 1 and then a DC-Roma 2, ending up with 2 entire laptops of e-waste when I should be able to upgrade boards and keep the screen/battery/keyboard/touchpad/webcam/speakers/microphone/fingerprint reader, ending up with 1 complete laptop of e-waste and 1 additional board of e-waste.

All of Sipeeds form factors are supposed to be upgradeable: laptops, tablet and SBC... but personally I would like to have it verified beforehand that all ports and functions are supported by the new module before switching.

[0]: Twitter: <http://x.com/SipeedIO/status/1801460880481169735>

I guess I don't understand the problem. If you don't want to buy the laptop, don't buy it?

I'll note that an SBC and a SoM are different things. SoM (system on module)s are, as the name says, just one module out of many (usually with a carrier, I guess in this case that's laptop). An SBC is much more often designed to be standalone. I will note that those SoMs look suspiciously similar to SMARC SoMs. If so, you should be able to swap them out for ARM, x86, I guess RISC-V, etc modules as they get released. Some of those are indeed just laptop-y motherboards.

Industry has had SoM carriers with swappable SoMs for ages. Just look up SMARC carrier. Any one of those should be able to take any SMARC SoM. Same thing with COM-Express. They have different sizes (type 10, type 6, some others I don't remember, where I think backwardsly 10 is the smallest). Interestingly I haven't been able to quickly find SMARC or CoME laptop carriers. So, if that's what these are, they're actually industry leading innovators instead of holding people back. These types of SoMs are even less wasteful. Things like USB hubs, ethernet PHYs, battery circuitry, video converters, all of those can stay on the carrier and the core functionality of the chip (CPU/SoC, flash, RAM) can get changed out as new ones come in. In a way, it may even be better than framework. Again, if this really is a set of SMARC carriers and not just them using the same form-factor or looking similar.

> SBCs on a module

That's an SoC on a module (though nobody says SoCoM) (or even worse, if it's also a SiP, a SoCiPoM). I don't think that's really a proper use of the term SBC. An SBC is a standalone, able to be used by itself product. Usually no need to buy anything else to adapt it to the outside world.

If I'm feeling fancy, I'll add a power supply and a housing to that order -- and maybe a keyboard, a mouse, a display, and/or some storage or other accessories. But it's still rooted as a singular PCB, and that Single Board Computer can be made to do useful work with a minimum of help.

This is profoundly distinct from when I order a laptop, wherein: I'm absolutely not buying a bare PCB. My laptop is, at minimum, absolutely going to include a screen, a keyboard, a pointer, a battery, a power supply, and a housing to tie it all together.

---

If a laptop is an SBC, then a Playstation 5 is an SBC. A pocket supercomputer and an iPad are both SBCs. ONVIF camera? VoIP desk phone? SBC. Asus router? SBC. Wifi-connected light bulb? SBC!

That's madness.

If I'm buying a laptop, then I'm buying a laptop. This laptop may or may not contain an SBC, but it's primarily a laptop. We have a term for these things: It is "laptop."

If I'm buying a light bulb, then I'm buying a light bulb. This light bulb may or may not contain an SBC, but it's primarily a light bulb.

And if I'm buying an SBC, then I'm not implicitly buying anything more than a single-board computer. It is primarily an SBC. (We have a term for these things, too: It is "SBC.")

This kind of excessive and deliberate ambiguation is as dumb as the term "loosing" was ten years ago, and it needs to stop.

CPU competition picked up a while ago when AMD got their stuff together, but it takes time to turn the boat around, if it is actually turning.

On the other hand we didn’t see laptop CPU replacement as a really mainstream thing during the 90’s/early 2000’s era when things were really going crazy.

On the other other hand, everybody knew desktop PCs were the way to go for performance back then, so tinkering with laptop performance would have been a somewhat odd thing to do.

Hard to speculate about or even measure, because people who tinker with hardware are in a pretty small niche already.

The idea of a RISC-V laptop sounds cool, but this feels like just grabbing a raspberry pi and sticking it in a laptop chasis. It doesn't seem like this is going to really offer anything new in this space other than maybe some increased visibility for RISC-V (esp. if Linus Tech Tips covers it), and a neat project/option for people with existing Framework parts.

As far as development purposes, I don't see what this offers over an existing SBC or even just a VM. From what I've seen of people running Linux on these things, it is definitely not something you'd want to develop on... plus, it seems like DeepCompute sells their own RISC-V laptops which are (probably) more powerful than this thing: https://store.deepcomputing.io/products/dc-roma-riscv-laptop...

As someone who's been looking for an excuse to get a Framework, I'm thrilled at the idea that if this doesn't pan out, I can just swap in a different mainboard and convert it to a full-featured x86 laptop, and then donate the RISC-V mainboard to the tinkerers at my local hackerspace (who are more than capable of 3D-printing a nice enclosure for it).

I thought I saw someone else publish specmarks to corroborate this assertion, but i can't find it right now.

e.g. SiFive P870 is competitive with ARM's best, whereas Ventana Veyron V2 and Tenstorrent Ascalon/Alastor compete with the state of the art from AMD/Intel/Apple/Qualcomm.

RISC-V enables the best processors.

I mean, emulating your core for development is a good approach in general, but at some point you may want to run your code on actual silicon.

So sure, an Intel i9 or ARM Mac is probably going to be faster than a 4 core U74 SoC, but if you're using a RISC-V core for some embedded application, having a RISC-V system to test with is probably a good idea.

And it's cool you can get a RISC-V SBC for a couple hundred bux. It wasn't too long ago that you paid $2k for a 4 core U54 SoC with minimal peripherals. And if you can stuff it in a laptop form factor, it's portable.

As for actual use the potential lies in the modularity. You could work primarily from an x86 laptop but swap the RISK-V board in for testing. And whichever board isn't currently in the laptop can be even be loaded into the small desktop shell Framework makes. If the price is right an existing Framework user could possibly get a RISC-V machine for less money than one of the dedicated laptops from DeepCompute without needing to buy another screen, keyboard, battery, etc and end up with a better build quality to boot.

OT, but does something like that exist for the Pi 5? I actually loved the Pi 400 Desktop Kit (I hope they make one for the Pi 5!), and I saw quite a few laptop shells for the Pi 4, but I've not seen anything announced for the Pi 5 except for various ridiculous "desktop" cases (like the Pironman 5 that I've actually ordered).

Can you please elaborate? I'm a programmer with a linux framework laptop (NixOS specifically).

Yeah. spacemiT K1 is a new chip, 8core, RVA22 with Vector extension.

JH7110 is old in contrast. Was first seen in VisionFive 2 in January 2023. Only 4 cores, slower, and RVA20 without Vector.

While it's a niche product, it is great to see other companies actually developing components for the Framework platform, and more, more diverse options for components starting to appear. Yes, as people point out, this product doesn't make much sense for many people, but it doesn't have to: part of the advantage of this platform is that components don't need to appeal to a wide customer base. We are also starting to see this now with the two screen options, the speakers (choice between louder or more accurate), etc.

If, as it seems, this is going to be quite low cost, I might buy one just to play around with it. It would be easy to swap with my normal mainboard, and when not in laptop form, could go in a printed enclosure.

Looking at the photo, it of course has no M.2 for storage, as mentioned in the blog post (nrp explains that choice on Framework's forum [3]), but does look like it has one for the wifi card; the microSD slot is also visible. It also seems to have quite a large fan and cooling arrangement for a JH7110, compared to other boards with it?

Battery on the DC-ROMA appears to have been 48 Wh [2], so not enormously smaller than Framework's 61 Wh and 55 Wh options, and battery life may be comparable plus 15% - 25%.

[1]: https://deepcomputing.io/a-risc-v-world-first-independently-...

[2]: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1496701-world%E2%80%99s-firs...

[3]: https://community.frame.work/t/introducing-a-new-risc-v-main...

I feel like this has been the promise of the modern manufacturing era for so long, but it’s felt like all the momentum’s gone in the opposite direction - everyone chasing the most beige thing they can to try to get the largest market share. I’m excited to see more products and companies pushing against that trend, and it’s part of what I really appreciate about Framework - their product is absolutely a niche product and will always be, and they’re doing the hell out of it.

Please make more weird partnerships.

I'd love to have a pen tablet color E-Ink screen with a mechanical keyboard on a 13 inch laptop.

The only suggestion I'd make is to get the upgraded screen (sorry, even more expensive). The default screen is OK, but it has a fairly distracting "dot pattern" over it in certain lights that I wish wasn't there, and the lower resolution is tough to go back to after using high-dpi displays. I'll probably get the upgraded screen at some point, but it's tough to justify buying a new screen for a brand-new laptop. Wish it had been available when I bought it, but that's life sometimes :)

The one downside to Framework is that they're nice laptops and (precisely because they're repairable and upgradable) they hold value really well... which means the second-hand market exists but isn't an easy way to score dirt cheap hardware. I can drop $200 on eBay and get a good thinkpad; I can't get any Framework anywhere close to that.

As more component upgrades other than motherboards become available, however, it may be that a more useful used market could develop. And it may be that building a 'used' laptop may end up usually involving buying a few new parts. For example, having, over time, upgraded the top cover, hinges, mainboard, battery, wifi card, RAM, and SSD, if I upgrade the display and camera with the soon-to-be-available new modules, I think someone could build a full laptop with my old parts, a bottom cover kit, an input cover, and some fasteners; it may be that the bottom cover (and fasteners) are the only parts there that would need to be purchased new, as I expect other people have replaced input covers (some of my keycaps are starting to degrade, but they actually degrade rather gracefully)

But still, this would be more complex than simply buying a used laptop, and would need a marketplace for all of those parts. I know there was some discussion from Framework hoping someday to facilitate a used component market; that seems like it would be challenging, but on the other hand, Framework seems to have been steadily, actually pursuing the goals they have laid out.

Framework does sell factory seconds for as low as $500 right now, though they need a few more components to be functional.

I'd second this idea. Could be doable by just making every component in the DIY edition optional during configuration, though I don't know how much that'd impact their current manufacturing flow (given that even the DIY edition laptops are mostly preassembled).

Hahaha. Really curious if they’ll announce a snapdragon x elite board. I love the idea of RISC-V long term, but would love an X Elite board for the near future.

But you could say the same thing about ARM in the 90's/early 2000's. Looks like nothing much and then suddenly it is everywhere.

Already happened. 10+ billion cores already shipped as of RISC-V Summit in December 2022. Assume a much higher number by now.

What's new is the general developer/enthusiast visibility we're starting to see.

For ARM that was Raspberry Pi. For RISC-V, the "Raspberry Pi" moment was the release of VisionFive 2, in January 2023, using this same JH7110 SoC.

There are better SoCs now, and SBCs using them e.g. spacemiT K1, in Banana Pi BPi-F3.

That chip has 8 cores that implement RVA22 with Vector extension.

In contrast, JH7110 has only 4 cores, they are slower, and they only implement RVA20, which is essentially RISC-V as of the original user and supervisor specs ratified in late 2019. It makes little sense today, as RISC-V and its ecosystem have advanced considerably.

Arm processors are way better with battery. There are these new Snapdragon X Elite Laptops, which verify the better battery life. I think to be competitive with Apple, the battery life must improve.

Also, the speakers are weak, likely due to none glued construction. I can live with that. Love how easy it is to swap stuff out. Screen is awesome, would love OLED if possible. Also, the bigger size 16, would better fit my needs.

Currently that computer is sitting on a shelf. Very cool technology. Love Framework!

That said, it is pretty rare for me to go more than 10 or so hours without any access to electricity.

At the moment most of my power appears to be going to Bluetooth and wifi, which seems hard to blame on the instruction set.

It sort of reminds me when you actually had a choice of whether you would set up a Token Ring or Ethernet network, before the option was taken away by the overwhelming ossification of existing hardware.

Tenstorrent is supposed to be delivering a "high-end" RISC-V CPU soon/this year... Don't know what it will look like, but one can dream: It's Jim Keller, after all. If RISC-V is going to blow up general purpose computing he'll probably be making the explosives.

And then one can imagine a Framework mainboard running it.

The DeepComputing launch page[1] reads: WORLD'S FIRST RISC‑V LAPTOP GATS A MASSIVE UPGRADE AND EQUIPS WITH UBUNTU

Am I suffering a lingo mishap or is that a rather obvious typo?

[1] https://deepcomputing.io/

Not for me, but I will absolutely switch over to the first board that is consumer-focused, assuming it is competitive on performance and battery life.

JH7110 is RVA20 w/o vector.

I think this is a crucial step on the way to getting an actually good experience on RISC-V based platforms.

The neat thing about this specific implementation is that it can be dropped right into an existing Framework laptop — a very viable hardware platform. Thus, it will allow developers (presumably mainly on Linux) to test and iron out issues in their software, the only way to fix those software problems you speak of.

It represents a strong leap forward for RISC-V and open ISAs in general.

Be the coolest kid in the block.

Now, seriously, people buy RISC-V boards in order to use RISC-V boards. If it were to do something else, you'd probably be better off with an x86 or ARM design.

Already is.

There's a default flow with u-boot SPL, opensbi and u-boot.

There's an alternative flow which includes TianoCore (UEFI).

There's another alternative flow, oreboot.

All the tiny ROM inside the SoC does is fetch the next stage from elsewhere, as per the state of some GPIOs. One of the options is XMODEM on the UART.

DRAM setup and such happen in the next stage, which is e.g. u-boot SPL mentioned above.

>doesn't have the equivalent of the IME

There are some extra tiny cores in the SoC. They are available for you to use; you can implement an IME if you wanna. But by default they're doing nothing.

Actually, it does! Check the block diagram on the first PDF linked to by this article, it has two RISC-V "monitor cores", a 32-bit one and a 64-bit one, besides the four 64-bit main cores.

> and thus will be open-source "librebootable" from the start, with no binary blobs.

There's always going to be a small bootstrap ROM, to configure everything to the point where code can be loaded from the external flash; but other than that, I agree with you: I also hope that the bootstrap code, and the code which runs on these "monitor cores", will be open-source from the start.

Anything else can generally be re-compiled. Several distributions support RISC-V already. Alpine has a total of 11378 aports, of which 850 are marked explicitly as "doesn't build for riscv64".

Currently I'm using qemu for that, but for someone who doesn't live and breath qemu it's an uphill battle.

It's not pretty, or fair, but that's how it all actually works.

> This Mainboard is extremely compelling, but we want to be clear that in this generation, it is focused primarily on enabling developers, tinkerers, and hobbyists to start testing and creating on RISC-V. The peripheral set and performance aren’t yet competitive with our Intel and AMD-powered Framework Laptop Mainboards

Good that they acknowledge it, but that is putting the performance difference very very lightly.

> DeepComputing is demoing an early prototype of this Mainboard in a Framework Laptop 13 at the RISC-V Summit Europe next week, and we’ll be sharing more as this program progresses.

I'll definitely check it out.

Hard agree. Not with spacemiT K1 (8 core, faster, RVA22 + Vector) already in devices on-sale.

I have had a JH7110 board (VisionFive 2) since January 2023. It was nice at the time. Now it's aging, with only RVA20 and no Vector extension.

RISC-V is moving really fast.

RISC-V support in a laptop is cool and the future and all, but I still feel the need to say that I'm getting a Snapdragon X based Framework 13 (maybe 16) the minute it's available.

Similar to the AMD/Xilinx Zynq family of boards ($150 to $3K), https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/device-famil...

Or Bunnie Huang's Precursor dev kit for RISC-V with handheld kb/display ($600), https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor

> Precursor draws less power than most other FPGAs thanks to the "-1L" variant Xilinx Spartan 7-Series at its heart. (The "L" stands for "low leakage.") That efficiency — combined with a super-low-power Lattice iCE40 UP5K FPGA for deep-sleep system management and a Silicon Labs WF200 with integrated network co-processor for Wi-Fi connectivity — allows Precursor to achieve a standby time measured in days and an active screen time of about five to six hours.

The Precursor is a neat device, but in the end it's essentially a toy. The entire concept hinges on emulating a SoC with the FPGA, but a real SoC can offer an order of magnitude more performance at a tenth the price. It only makes sense if your risk model is a chip vendor putting backdoors in the SoC - but at that point why would you trust the FPGA? It's just moving the goalposts, really.

AMD/Xilinx will use US-mainland TSMC fab for some FPGAs.

> you lack the necessary IO in a mobile form factor

Framework has pluggable I/O expansion modules.

The new ARM processors like Snapdragon X elite and the M processors from apple sound promising, but I don't know what I should think about the company "ARM".

Though what I find a bit weird is that this board only has 4 cores, as this is intended for developers which probably need to compile many things which could benefit from more cores.

Yes that's for sure, and it's amazing that Framework created this, so people which already have a Framework 13 could easily swap their mainboard.

But slower than a pi 3b+ is a bummer, I'm not the target audience for it, but I think this may be a show stopper for developers who want to port software to risc-v and use it for testing. Or at least it would not be a great experience (apart from all the other problems you'll have with a relatively "new" ISA like risc-v)

There's a tiny ROM inside, which just downloads the next stage into SRAM (cpu cache as RAM) from eMMC, SD card or SPI flash, or receives it via UART (XMODEM), according to the state of two GPIOs. This tiny ROM remains accessable, can be dumped and examined.

The next stage is typically u-boot SPL, which then loads a payload of opensbi + u-boot, which in turn loads the device tree and kernel. This is all open source.

There are already alternative boot flows implemented, such as oreboot and tianocore.

It's a way for other companies to piggyback off of Framework rather than the other way around, while strengthening the Framework ecosystem.

It's great to see partner ecosystem developing! Framework is such an exciting company.

Right now we are nowhere near that. RISC-V software and hardware is not very mature at all. But much of this can change very quickly once products launch.

Yup, I've got the RK3588 module preordered for my Reform and I'm looking forward to it. Would be neat to see an RK3588 board for the Framework too.

SiFive's U74 cores aren't as inefficient as their earlier cores, but ops per megahertz still isn't on par with high end Intel or ARM cpus.

But if you're going for RISC-V, you're likely interested in it for something other than peak performance.

When I did my time in the RISC-V ecosystem, I thought we would never see catalog parts, so its good to see yet another RV64GC board using a catalog part.