The StarFive Vision Five 2 single-board computer is no rocket and requires a willingness to experiment. Nevertheless, it is still one of the most attractive 64-bit RISC-V systems running Linux.
Anzeige
As part of a crowdfunding campaign, the new Vision Five 2 Lite version will be available for as little as 20 US dollars, excluding shipping costs, import sales tax and customs clearance fees charged by the transportation service provider. In return, you get the version with 2 GB RAM without a WLAN adapter. WLAN currently only costs 3 US dollars more, while StarFive charges 30 and 37 US dollars respectively for the versions with 4 or 8 GB RAM.
Differences of the Lite board
Compared to the StarFive Vision Five 2 (Single-board computer in test: StarFive VisionFive 2 with RISC-V chip), the Lite version has a slightly slower processor SoC: In the StarFive JH7110S, the RISC-V cores clock at a maximum of 1.25 GHz, while the JH7110 clocks at up to 1.5 GHz.
According to the Kickstarter website, the Lite board only has one Ethernet port and a single USB 3.0 socket, and the M.2 slot is only connected with one PCIe lane.
StarFive is a Chinese company that was founded with the participation of the US company SiFive. SiFive supplies StarFive with the RISC-V cores of the U74 type announced in 2018 for the JH7110. They are said to calculate at a similar speed to the eight-year-old ARM Cortex-A55, but are significantly slower according to our measurements.
Competitors
Anzeige
In addition to the Vision Five 2 (VF2), which is still available, the StarFive JH7110 is also used on the single-board computers Pine64 Star64, OrangePi RV and Milk-V Mars as well as on the DeepComputing DC-ROMA motherboard for the Framework Laptop.
Several single-board computers with the SpacemiT K1 alias Ky X1, which has eight RISC-V cores, are now also available, including OrangePi RV2 (test), BananaPi BPI-F3 and DC-ROMA II.
Driver support remains poor
The graphics drivers for the GPU Imagination Technology BXE-4-32 integrated in the JH7110 are not making much progress. There are special Debian images with built-in drivers. However, the open source drivers promised by Imagination in 2022 do not seem to be available yet.
Ubuntu "supports" various boards with JH7110 SoC, but only with Ubuntu Server without graphical desktop – explicitly without GPU support.
Fedora's RISC-V Special Interest Group (SIG) calls the Vision Five 2 its "flagship board". There are also suitable images for Fedora 41 and 42, although the developers do not go into more detail about GPU support.
(ciw)
Don't miss any news – follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn or Mastodon. This article was originally published in German. It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.