This appears to be the same processor as the HiFive Premier P550 dev board. So, while this is pretty much the fastest RISC-V CPU, it is still only about as fast as a Raspberry Pi 4.
Still, RISC-V is catching up. Fast enough to be useful.
What I really want to see is the price. The HiFive board with 16 GB is $400 (pretty steep). A 16 GB Pi 5 is under $200 and of course faster.
Still, depending on price, RISC-V is becoming a viable choice. Very cool.
See thats the usecase I always wonder about: an older x86mainboard with a CPU (way faster than any pi and with additional sata/m2 ports ) included is like 50 bucks, 16 GB RAM for that like 20. Even if you buy stock and exchangeable CPU from last generation, you are way under 200 bucks.
That beeing said I’m excited RISCV seems to be gaining traction.
Used x86-64 has by far the best price/performance. Not even ARM can touch it. Even early 64 bit Intel chips were as fast as a Pi 5.
However, old x86-64 is going to be large and power hungry. It is also going to suck in the GPU and RAM dept. Bad for AI.
RISC-V is becoming a viable alternative to ARM. Outside of Apple, neither is an alternative to x86-64.
There are many use cases where the speed of the main CPU is not limiting beyond a certain point. Those are the use cases that SBCs play in. RISC-V is entering that zone (except for price).
In other words, RISC-V is becoming viable for early adopters. From there, it will grow volume, drop price and cross-the-chasm to the rest of us.
US/China relations are slowing things down though. We should have had the Milk-V OASIS by now. It would have been the board to really change minds about RiSC-V. But it just got cancelled as the chip maker has had sanctions applied against them.