Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects
44 points
2 days ago
| 11 comments
| riscv.org
| HN
rcarmo
2 hours ago
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I had a go at it a few months ago: https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/12/2230

Not bad at all, but the OpenWRT image still didn’t have Wi-Fi support a week or so ago, so I don’t know how good software support is going to be in the long run.

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swetland
1 hour ago
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Don't suppose there's actually documentation for the CPU anywhere? (I mean more than a tiny "datasheet" with a very high level overview and/or a pile of random Linux/uboot patches)
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self
10 minutes ago
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Spacemit's website is a pain to use, but the processor appears to work almost exactly like the K1, so:

- go to https://developer.spacemit.com/

- click on documentation

- click on Keystone

- click on K1

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moffkalast
36 minutes ago
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Raspberry wouldn't be the market leader if Orange, Rock and the rest could write documentation and support to save their life.
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5d41402abc4b
2 hours ago
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Are there any SBC with memory slot so that i can plug in 32GiB or more of RAM?
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chithanh
2 hours ago
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Yes, lots of Intel and AMD based SBCs have SO-DIMM slots, but you'll have to accept the 3.5" format.

Regarding RISC-V SBCs, there was serious consideration to release the Milk-V Oasis with SG2380 and LPCAMM2. But this didn't work out as the SG2380 was held up by geopolitical issues.

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LeFantome
12 minutes ago
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Still so mad about that
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hamonrye
32 minutes ago
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No, usually SBC's tend to support after-party manufacturer so when RAM is installed BIOS has to collect a key signature prior to getting OS to boot.
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Havoc
1 hour ago
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Orange pi 5 plus has 32gb versions. Pricey though
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rcarmo
2 hours ago
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Not really. Most in the ARM space, at least, are soldered on or you need to switch out the entire compute module. Intel ones (not mini-PCs, but industrial gear and things like the LattePanda) also tend to have soldered RAM.
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jauntywundrkind
2 hours ago
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Absolutely smoked by rpi5, often by rpi4. To make matters worse, a radically unsupported core with no mainline support. https://www.phoronix.com/review/orange-pi-rv2-benchmarks/2
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Havoc
1 hour ago
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Don’t think people buy riscv for their performance competitiveness at this stage
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moffkalast
35 minutes ago
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People don't really buy RISCV at all at this point, there's noting less compatible you could get if you tried.
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Daviey
23 minutes ago
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No SATA :(
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self
7 minutes ago
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I bought the 32 GB emmc module for it, for the root filesystem. I have a 500 GB nvme drive for everything else. I believe an nvme-to-sata riser will work, but I don't have one to test with (plus you'd need to power the sata drive with something else).
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asadm
2 hours ago
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2 TOPS is not a lot for AI projects.
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muxamilian
23 minutes ago
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They get this number by simply adding up all CPUs' processing speed. There is no NPU or similar: https://medium.com/@zlodeibaal/orange-pi-rv2-ai-board-scam-7...
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jdiaz97
1 hour ago
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It's a lot for 40 USD. And not every AI project is a Language Model project.
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OhMeadhbh
1 hour ago
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meh. i write a lot of PROLOG, so 2 TOPS is A LOT of horsepower.
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protocolture
2 hours ago
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I keep seeing suggestions that theres no software support for Orange Pi.

Whats the go there? Is there no distro like Raspbian supporting it?

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chithanh
1 hour ago
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Xunlong (Orange Pi) operates similarly to Pine64, throw hardware at the community and then let the community figure out the software part.

They provide official OS images at release but don't care much afterwards.

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OhMeadhbh
1 hour ago
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There's a RV64 port of Debian and the RV2 and R2S are on the list of compatible hardware. No guarantee it'll be easy getting it loaded, it was like pulling teeth to get it on the SiFive U74 board, but that was 7 years ago, so it's GOT to be better by now.
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rcarmo
1 hour ago
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There are plenty of Orange Pi boards with Armbian or unofficial Ubuntu support, but they’re ARM based.
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goodpoint
30 minutes ago
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$40 is way too expensive
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yogorenapan
4 minutes ago
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Depends what you're using it for. A lot of people tend to buy pi-likes as servers which is absolutely bonkers. If you time eBay right, $50 would get you a fairly powerful intel NUC with much more performance and peripherals
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sylware
1 hour ago
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RISC-V going forward, one of the only beacons of hope in the silicon world.

I need one of such devices for my self-hosted services. And it will be time to port from C to assembly, really, because we have finally a CPU ISA which is 'sweet spot' balanced, standard, global, pushed forward with significant resources and without IP locks anywhere. No more developer/vendor lock-in via "the only compiler able to generate correct machine code", extremely hard to do planned obsolescence, etc, we need mainstream adoption NOW :)

The main blocker: how do I buy such device with a noscript/basic (x)html browser? And no way I use a credit card on a web site: would require well identified bank swift account, or wallet codes bought from local and physical currency terminals. I don't know of any local retailers I can buy such device from. Yep, the "web geniuses" at amazon (which supports wallet code) broke noscript/basic (x)html support a few years ago.

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kirito1337
2 days ago
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I don't like RISC-V unless it has a good GPU
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warrenm
2 days ago
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GPUs are [effectively] irrelevant for many use cases (IoT, embedded, most servers, etc)
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_zoltan_
2 hours ago
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the title says "... AI projects". now, maybe our definitions are different, but you probably want some hardware acceleration.
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pjmlp
43 minutes ago
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Most likely comming in vector, matrix instructions or NPU like chipsets, not necessarly GPUs.
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jdiaz97
1 hour ago
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The chip (KY X1) comes with AI acceleration...
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snvzz
2 days ago
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Attach your favourite GPU at the PCIe slot.
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webdevver
2 hours ago
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they all suck. someone needs to make an open source gpu already, its been way too long.
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timschmidt
2 hours ago
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We did back in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project

And there have been some others as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_...

Recently https://www.furygpu.com/

Part of the problem is that every ASIC manufacturer (and indeed each fabrication process) has a different toolchain with a different set of primitives for circuit design. Yosys and other open tooling for FPGAs has helped a great deal in lowering the barrier to chip design and by association reuse of circuits. But every ASIC, at the moment, is tied to some vendor's PDK. Here's the one Google open sourced for Cypress Semi's SKY130 process node: https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk

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Findecanor
1 hour ago
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It is at least theoretically possible to build a headless "GPU" from RISC-V processors that have the vector extension (RVV). RVV had been designed to be able to run programs compiled for the SIMT execution model that most GPUs use.

This Orange Pi RV2 has a small vector unit in each core, and could be used for at least prototyping the software until more powerful chips are available.

BTW. There have also been a couple hardware startups that have been working on commercial GPUs based on RISC-V's vector extension, with their own GPU-specific instruction set extensions for texture lookup and the like.

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ekianjo
2 hours ago
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It's probably a series of patent landmines...
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AnthonyMouse
2 hours ago
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Hardware patents are orthogonal to open source software. If a patent covers the hardware then someone who wants to manufacture the hardware needs to license the patent, but you were never going to get free-as-in-beer hardware anyway, and a hardware patent is independent of whether the hardware is fully documented or has firmware with published source code and a license that allows users to make changes to it.
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ekianjo
2 hours ago
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