Summary
OrangePi has released a new single-board computer powered by a RISC-V processor. It takes some inspiration from Raspberry Pi boards, but uses the more experimental RISC-V architecture instead of ARM.
RISC-Vis an open-standard Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), intended to work as an alternative to x86 (used in most desktop and laptop processors), ARM (used in most phones and tablets), and other existing CPU architectures. Thedifficult legacy architecture of x86and thecomplex licensing of ARMhas caused some companies to more seriously consider RISC-V as the computing platform of the future. So far, it’s showing the most promise in embedded hardware, and RISC-V development boards are crucial for testing software on the emerging platform.
The new OrangePi RV2 is a single-board computer, much like Raspberry Pi boards, released as a sequel to last year’soriginal Orange Pi RV. This model uses the 8-core Ky X1 RISC-V AI CPU, which supposedly provides 2TOPS for AI tasks without a separate NPU. That’s a far cry fromthe 40 TOPS found in modern Copilot+ Windows PC laptops, but not too shabby for a small and affordable development board. OrangePi says the RV2 only uses 80% of the power of a similar ARM Cortex-A55 development board.
For connectivity, you get two M.2 slots (one on the top, one on the bottom) that can be used for SSDs, a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi 5.0, Bluetooth 5.0 with BLE support, two gigabit Ethernet ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, a 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack, a USB-C port for power, and four USB Type-A ports in total. The board is sold in 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB RAM variants. Not bad at all.
Most people should stick with an ARM-powered Raspberry Pi orlow-end x86 Intel NUC, as those hardware platforms are more stable and have a larger selection of available applications and operating systems. Development boards like the OrangePi RV2 are intended for people specifically interested in the wild west of RISC-V, though there might be some use cases where the OrangePi RV2 can outperform a typical Pi board, perhaps with local AI models. We’ll have to wait for real-world testing to know for sure. This board is primarily intended for use with Ubuntu Linux 24.04.
The software ecosystem around RISC-V is still rough and not always stable, but there have been many advancements over the past year. Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Debian for RISC-V processors are slowly improving, andthe Fedora Linux project is also working towards full supportfor the architecture. The RISC-V architecture still isn’t a full replacement for ARM or x86, but it’s getting there.
You canbuy the 2GB RAM model from Amazon, and the4GB RAM versionand8GB RAM modelare also available. The boards are alsoavailable from AliExpress, which are closer to the intended prices of $30 for 2GB RAM, $40 for 8GB RAM, and $50 for 8GB RAM. That pricing is pretty close to the Raspberry Pi 4, which starts at $35 for 1GB RAM, but the Pi series is a far more stable and well-supported ecosystem.
