VisionFive RISC-V Linux SBC

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers this time we're going to take a look at this the vision 5 single board computer from star 5 which is a trailblazing piece of technology because this has got a risk 5 processor that can run a full linux operating system and in case you're not in the know risk 5 is a free and open instruction set architecture or isa that provides an alternative to the closed isas used in today's x86 and arm cpus so what we have here with the vision 5 isn't just a new single board computer and that's always exciting but more broadly this is one of the first lower cost computers of any kind that can run a desktop operating system on a cpu with an open instruction set architecture so let's go and take a closer look right here we have the vision 5 which has been created by star 5 which is a company dedicated to promoting risk 5 in high performance computing and star 5 are a manufacturer of risk 5 processors star 5 has launched this board to help promote the risc-5 ecosystem so this is very much an sbc for developers and others who wish to pioneer on the risk 5 frontier i purchased the board as part of a starter kit from all net for 179 dollars and the other things included in the kit were this which is a little active cooler which also has some push pins to attach it to the board and there was also included this which is a micro sd card as you can see a 64 gigabyte card and this is pre-flashed with a risc-5 version of the fedora linux distro which of course we'll be testing out on the board later in the video so let's release division 5 from its packaging looks nice and straightforward even for me just take off the cardboard and oh it's the wrong way around there we are and a little that latch and haha this is always the exciting bit isn't it taking out a new single board computer and where are we all i get too excited there we are a brand new single board computer and not just a brand new single ball computer the first one i've ever owned with a risk 5 processor which we can see down on the board there specifically the soc here is a star 5 jh 7100 this is dual core with two one gigahertz risk 5 sci-5 u74 64-bit cores sci-5 is a leading designer of processors based on the risc-5 instruction set architecture and as we can see here on their website a u-74 core is a member of the sci-5 essential family this is divided into three performance series as well as the three categories e s and u here e and s are 32-bit and 64-bit cores for embedded devices whilst you calls are 64-bit and capable of running fully featured operating systems such as linux as we can see the u74 core is part of the highest performance 7 series of the essential family with a comparable arm core being an a55 in addition to its two u74 cores the jh 7100 contains a 600 megahertz tensilica vp6 vision dsp or vision digital signal processor otherwise known as a vpu as well as a 500 megahertz neural network engine and an 800 megahertz nv dla nvdla stands for nvidia deep learning accelerator and is a free open source neural network ai accelerator created by nvidia as all of this signals this sbc and indeed a great deal of other risk five hardware right now is targeted towards ai applications and the emerging artificial intelligence of things or aiot and if you're wondering what all of this is about i'll be covering it in the forthcoming risk five explaining computers video back with division five whilst the specification of the soc here is new to many of us the remaining hardware components are pretty familiar specifically here on the top of the board we've got eight gigabytes of low power ddr4 ram and these two four gigabyte ram chips and we've also got a wireless module which gives us 2.4 gigahertz wi-fi and bluetooth 4.2 next on the front edge we find a 3.5 millimeter audio jack and four very welcome usb 3 type a ports next to these we've then got a vertically mounted full size hdmi connector offering 1080p output at up to 60 frames a second and then a gigabit ethernet port and finally the usb c port for powering the board and specifically a 5 volt 3 amp adapter is recommended on the first short edge we then find a mipi dsi or display serial interface connector for connecting an lcd display and then down in front of the wireless module just down here we've got one of those tiny wireless antenna connectors rotating 90 on the second lung edge we find a 40 pin gpio connector with a standard raspberry pi layout and then a header for poe power over ethernet and then a header for debug as well as a couple of indicator leds and switches and the switches are for reset and boot mode last but not least the second short edge boasts a two pin five volt fan connector and two mippy csi or camera serial interface connectors allowing two cameras to be connected to the vision five finally if we turn the board over there's not a lot to see underneath if that was only really a micro sd card slot into which i'm going to fit the card that came in the starter kit the one that contains fedora for a risk five and so now all i've got to do is to fit the cooler and we can boot division 5 into linux greetings here i am back again and i've now mounted the cooler as you can see plugged in it's fan as well and if you're thinking do we really need a heatsink with a fan on this board probably not but i always applaud caution when it comes to cooling particularly on developmental piece of hardware and of course as you can see used some standoffs to raise the board off the surface and plugged in all the usual gubbins so let's turn on the power and here we go let's go across to the hdmi output which is initially black as you can see but if we speed on a bit something will appear on the screen there we are we're clearly on a live computer and i should let you know this is not my first boot i've been experimenting with a vision 5 now for some time but still every time i boot it up i am surprised and amazed because here we're booting a full desktop operating system on a computer that doesn't have an x86 processor an intel or an amd processor it doesn't have a processor based on an arm design it has something else a risk 5 processor a processor where the instruction set architecture is free and open and i do find this very interesting this is really significant in the potential future of computing anyway we've now arrived at login screen as you can see and the default password i haven't changed it is star five if i've typed that right looks like i have we can see clearly we're running on the version five because i've got a picture of the board on the screen as you can see as a everything comes up we're clearly running fedora a remix of fedora for a risk 5 computer and this works pretty well you'll notice it's a little bit sluggish here and there but basically it works okay let's bring up for example the file manager down there which comes up like that hey farm manager in risk five you can see i'm very excited by this and if we go across to applications there are various things pre-installed remember this board is for development purposes and what's here very much reflects that but we do have down here for example uh h-top so we can look at what's going on on the system let's bring that up panda move it across a little bit so i always do like that all those stuff and we can see we've got our two cores represented here at the top we've got what about 469 megabytes of memory used out of our total of eight gigabytes so lots of memory free to do exciting things on this board and talking of exciting things so we run up a web browser we've got to be able to run up a web browser and a desktop operating system let's go down to internet and run up firefox like that very exciting it'll take a second to come up and while it's taking a second to come up i want to point out that whilst this is a development board i've not had any issues getting it up and running oh look we're going into firefox there we are there's firefox let's again move it around as they always do it's trying to get to explaining computers hopefully it'll manage to load explaining computers it can that's a marvelous thing and over here we've got to rv space which i think stands for risk 5 space and certainly it's a support forum and pages provided by star 5 for this single ball computer and for their other risk 5 products and as i was saying i've had no issues getting this board up and running it's been far easier to get working and to be recordable for video than many of the armbase sbcs i've reviewed on this channel over the years and the reason for that is that star 5 do support the board very well here in a rv space as you can see now it's loaded in there's lots of really useful documentation here so if you do want to join the revolution and start running a full desktop linux operating system on lower cost risk 5 hardware then i can certainly report that the vision 5 is a good place to start now i've been experimenting with software installation just to see which packages have already been ported to run in linux on risk 5 hardware and for start i've got audacity installed and running as you can see here and this does work although right now there isn't hdmi audio out on the version 5 we've only got output of audio from a 3.5 millimeter audio jack but it does work i can play this file there we are we've got a audacity running on the system and i've also installed oh dear it wants to say we want to save the project no i don't want to save the project we spend our lives answering these messages don't we anyway i've also installed as i said the gnu image manipulation program this will take a second to come up so we'll speed on through until the program has launched and here we are arriving in on a risk 5 computer it makes things feel a bit familiar doesn't it see a program like this running on the risk 5 hardware so let's do what i always do as a test in we'll do a new document if i can remember where it is right at the top chris and here we are we'll do a 1920 1080 document like that and i'm also going to go into filters some of you will be way ahead of me here filters and render and lava is my standard test because it takes a little while to execute and i'm sure some of you want to know how does the vision 5 compare currently to for example the performance of a raspberry pi 4 which is not really a fair comparison because running linux here on this risk 5 hardware is very very new but the comparison is still interesting so what i'm going to do is to bring up exactly the same setup on a raspberry pi and we'll use the magic of filmmaking to start them both off applying the filter at the same point in time there they go and we'll speed on forward until the pie has finished applying the filter and there we are the pie has completed the version 5 is still going we knew it would come second in this test but we'll let it complete and there we are the vision 5 my first wrist 5 computer has applied a complex filter right just before i bring this first part of our journey into risk five to a close i'm sure some of you have been writing in the comments already does it game can we play games on a risk 5 computer and you'll be pleased to hear that star 5 do provide some instructions for this and earlier i went through them to install quake on this computer and i've got it up here if i go to the terminal like that and if we execute that command we can bring up quake here it is playing an old game on the very very new type of computer that's good isn't it shall we put the terminal up out of the way a second whilst this is going on should we do that there we are we've got get quaint here now and if we just uh first staff and do a single player game and a new game we are playing games on a wrist 5 machine there we are i don't really know how to play this game but uh it is amazing isn't it we're actually wandering around in a very old game and uh on a very very new type of computer or with some lava there looks a bit worrying deary me you don't think i can go over there can i go over there aldo that didn't work very well did it anyway we've uh proved a point it is already possible to game on a risk 5 computer pioneering hardware like division 5 has the potential to lead us into a new era of open computing to explain what this is all about and what it may mean i'll soon be posting more risk 5 videos including further hardware reviews as well as broader explanations of what risk 5 is all about but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very reason [Music] you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 231,215

Keywords: RISC-V, RISC-V SBC, RISC-V hardware, RISC-V computer, StarFive, SiFive, VisionFive, VisionFive v1, VisionFive SBC, VisionFive Fedora, VisionFive Linux, RISC-V Linux, Linux, VisionFive review, VisionFive demo, VisionFive vs Raspberry Pi, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, open computing, RISC-V open computing

Id: 4PoWAsBOsFs

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 27 2022