It seems computers without an ARM or x86 chip are in serious demand in the RISC-V community.

A Raspberry Pi-like small-board computer with an RISC-V chip and GPU went up for [1]preorder on Alibaba two days ago, but is now listed as being no longer available.

[2]

No longer available. Source: Sipeeed. Click to enlarge

The system was announced by Chinese hardware firm Seeed Studios on the Sipeed Twitter [3]page on Oct. 12. A later tweet by the company noted that only 80 boards were available, and would ship in a month.

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The board has a dual-core Alibaba XuanTie C910 64-bit processor and supports Android 10 or Debian 11. The board's calling card is a graphics processor capable of 2D and 3D image acceleration, but more importantly is compatible with a RISC-V chip. The RISC-V community is hard at work building an open-source GPU based on the architecture.

An image shows the development board hooked on to the back of a 7-inch touchscreen, indicating possible use for kiosk applications. The screen is included with the board.

Pricing for the board wasn't listed on the site. The small-board computer enthusiasts over at CNX Software [8]noted a $399 price, though one Twitter user [9]complained of the $500 listed price being too high.

[10]

The board supports DDR4 RAM, flash storage, Gigabit Ethernet, and USB-C. The chip has a neural processing unit for AI applications. Another support page [11]notes the board has Wi-Fi and 16GB of eMMC storage. It also has regular I2C, SPI and GPIO interfaces found on single-board computers. ®

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[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003395978459.html

[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/10/14/sipeed.jpg

[3] https://twitter.com/SipeedIO/status/1448102818267664390

[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/08/riscv_vector_instructions/

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/22/first_riscv_epi_chip/

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/15/swervolf_riscv/

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/15/counterpoint_research_risc_v_predictions/

[8] https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/10/13/alibaba-t-head-rvb-ice-dual-core-risc-v-sbc-supports-android-10-debian-11/

[9] https://twitter.com/dugacina/status/1448200152947249154

[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YWj8-yMHHgWlpNv0hbVuRQAAAAE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[11] https://occ.t-head.cn/vendor/detail/index?id=3906780664213024768&vendorId=3706716635429273600&module=4#sticky

[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/