This computer is free.
Or well, it costs money to buy one,
but the idea behind it is free.
Free from patent restrictions, licensing fees,
and all other manner of innovation crushing limitations.
And it actually works today.
Look at it go.
I can run regular old desktop Linux
with a regular old keyboard and mouse.
I can even browse the regular old internet.
But can I play a regular old 3D accelerated game?
Yes!
Even a few short years ago,
the idea of RISC-V displacing or even competing
with established architectures like x86 or ARM
seemed like a pipe dream.
But it's amazing just how much can be accomplished
by a team of highly motivated industry giants
like Google, Tencent, and Qualcomm.
But the question is, why are they so motivated?
What's wrong with x86 and ARM anyway?
And why is U.S. Senator Marco Rubio
over there in the corner?
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This is the Milk 5 Pioneer,
and most of its specs are pretty normal.
It has 128 gigs of DDR4 memory,
a one-terabyte NVMe solid-state drive,
and a Radeon R5-230 graphics card.
We're gonna have it linked down below.
What isn't normal is the 64-core RISC-V processor.
RISC-V, or Reduced Instruction Set Computer 5,
is an open standard instruction set.
That means that anyone can build a processor using it
without any licensing fees or even permission.
The one in here was built by, actually,
okay, that's a little bit complicated.
We're gonna get to that later.
First, let's fire it up and see how she works.
Ooh.
You know, this isn't actually the first time
that we've looked at a RISC-V machine.
That honor goes to the Hi5 Unleashed way back in 2018.
But I think that you're gonna see
that things have progressed quite a lot since then.
Let's see if we can get into the BIOS on this bad boy.
Spoiler, we can't.
While it is expected to arrive
sometime in the next month or so,
at this time, there isn't a BIOS
or a UEFI in the traditional sense.
You just press the button and then wait for it to boot,
which takes a couple of minutes.
So while we wait for that,
let's talk a little bit about RISC.
As a bit of a refresher
from our previous videos on the topic,
an instruction set refers to the collection
of the most basic functions
that all other programs are built upon.
Things like adding, subtracting,
writing to memory, or reading from memory
are all things you might find in a CPU's instruction set.
The idea of a processor
with a minimal or reduced instruction set
started in the late 1970s with the experimental IBM 801,
and it stuck around pretty much since then
in some form or another.
Power PC processors, like those found in old Macs,
and ARM processors, like those found in new Macs,
not to mention your cell phone,
are both examples of RISC architectures.
ARM even used to be called Advanced RISC Machines.
Though, of course, RISC-V is not ARM,
even if they share some heritage.
So don't expect to just throw Mac OS
or Windows for ARM on this thing.
Thankfully, Linux exists,
specifically Fedora 38 for our demo today.
Start by loading up Firefox then.
It's taking a while.
Oh, wow, it's really slow.
I feel like that's a bit of a spoiler
for later in the video, but yikes.
What other software have we got on here?
LibreOffice?
Can we word process?
Yes!
Buddy?
Oh, she crashed.
Give it another shot.
Hey!
What about spell check though?
Yes!
Pretty exciting.
Time to try some free open source games like Open Arena.
Come on, Tony.
Come at me, bro.
Oh, geez, where'd you go?
Whoa, Ayumi.
Oh, wait, I got a rocket launcher.
Oh, this is good.
This is very good.
No, I want my rocket launcher.
What the heck is this?
She teleports.
What the?
What just happened?
Come on, how did that not count?
I don't have a single kill yet.
You know what?
I'm gonna blame that on the low frame rates.
Those make sense given that the system
is only drawing about 90 watts from the wall right now.
So at least you can't fault the efficiency.
Remember, that number includes our GPU as well.
But we've glossed over a pretty important detail so far.
The R in RISC is for reduced.
Sure, okay, but reduced from what?
CISC or complex instruction set computer processors
like the x86 chips made by Intel or AMD
have much more robust instruction sets.
This allows them to complete complex operations
with fewer inputs, something that used to be used
to reduce both development time
and the amount of disk space needed to store a program.
Except the thing is, modern development tools
are nothing like what they used to be.
And your typical dev no longer needs to worry about
whether the CPU will perform one complex operation
or if it will achieve the same result
with half a dozen simpler ones.
And Apple proved with the launch of their M-series silicon
that RISC's traditional role as an efficient
but low performance alternative could be left behind.
This new level of acceptance is a huge shot in the arm,
pun intended, for RISC-V.
You see, porting to RISC-V from some other RISC ISA
is much simpler than porting from x86,
which has resulted in a much larger software library
than the last time that we checked in.
But that's not even the coolest part.
The special sauce that made Apple's M1 launch so successful
was Rosetta 2, a translation layer
that allowed x86 applications to run
on Apple's new ARM RISC chips.
And I bet you probably see where I'm going with this.
Box 64 is a super cool piece of software
that should allow us to run x86 64-bit applications
on RISC-V without recompiling them up front.
Let's go ahead and try and install Steam,
which isn't in our package manager.
And we did find a Debian version of, but this is a problem.
Unfortunately, unless you're on Apple,
Steam is only 32-bit and Box 64
doesn't work with 32-bit applications.
So maybe there's another way for us to install Stardew Valley?
The answer is obviously yes,
because Petite Seb got it running here,
but we ran into an issue with GOG's Mojo installer
that we weren't able to get past,
at least at the time of filming.
So in a nutshell, it's kind of like the early days
of the Proton translation layer for gaming on Linux.
There's clearly a lot of work to be done,
but the bones are there,
and that is really, really exciting.
A big question we haven't touched on yet, though,
is why not just use ARM?
The truth is that the RISC-V instruction set
is pretty similar, but there's a big difference,
and that is that ARM is licensed.
You see, even though Apple manufactures
their own M3 chips with partners like TSMC,
and they've modified them quite a bit
compared to the ARM chips that are produced
by other manufacturers like Qualcomm or Marvell,
they still have to pay ARM some kind of licensing fee,
which is often a function of how many units they sell,
which, in Apple's case, is a lot.
And while they won't move nearly as many of these things,
there's still a lot to be learned
from poking at it a bit more,
because it's sort of half PC and half development kit.
Starting with the front I.O.,
this Type-C port, for example,
doubles as a debug console connector.
Then there's the fact that it runs quad-channel memory.
That's something I've not seen on the desktop
in quite some time.
There's two PCIe 16x slots
that seem to operate at Gen 4 speeds,
though it should be noted that one of them
is only a x8 connection,
and then we've also got an M.2
and another M.2,
meaning there's a fair bit of PCIe on this thing.
The SATA ports are weird.
There's five of them, which is an odd number,
literally and figuratively.
And the fact that they've all got
these little covers on them, right?
Like, what is up with that?
According to Milk-V, these are dust covers,
and that's not the only odd thing that we ask them about.
There's an MCU on here, which is an ARM chip.
And according to Milk-V,
they have no intention of replacing it
with a RISC-V equivalent in the near future.
And the same can be said about the PCIe controller
in the top left of the board
that is also an ARM chip
and actively cooled by a super annoying little fan.
If you guys heard that earlier in the video,
I unplugged it.
That's why it hasn't been making noise anymore.
Oh, wow, this is funky.
It only uses a 24-pin power connector.
No additional 4-pin or 8-pin or anything for the CPU.
That's pretty cool.
These banks of pins along the bottom
are apparently for USB debugging, UART,
and JTAG connections.
And then the cooler is a really interesting one.
You can see here, this has been modified
to fit an Intel LGA 1150 cooler
with a bracket that's included.
So theoretically, you could use any 1150 cooler you wanted,
but that's not what we're interested in.
We wanna take a look at what exactly it's cooling.
It turns out it's a Sofon SG2042 made by SophGo,
a subsidiary of Bitmain.
Now, Bitmain's major product up until this point
has been the Antminer, a crypto mining machine
that accounts for over 70% of all the processing power
on the Bitcoin blockchain.
But SophGo didn't design the actual cores that they're using.
The C920 core comes from T-Head Semiconductor Limited,
the chip division of Alibaba, the owner of AliExpress,
not to mention a vast number of other companies.
This chip then could be described as a collaboration
between arguably the most powerful company in crypto
and arguably the most powerful company in China.
It's not exactly high performance at the moment,
but it does work.
And if you think this has some folks scared, you are right.
SiFive, maker of the original RISC-V computer,
has laid off roughly 20% of their workforce recently.
Now, they claim that this is a restructuring,
and it likely is, but there could be more to this story.
After the United States government announced the ban
on exporting RTX 4090s to China,
several senators wanted to take it a step further,
with Marco Rubio, oh, that's why we had him
in the background, quoted as saying,
-"Communist China is developing open source
chip architecture to dodge our sanctions
and grow its chip industry."
He's referring to RISC-V here, and he's not entirely wrong,
even though in typical politician fashion,
his solution is more of a self-own than a clever maneuver.
The idea of banning US companies from working on RISC-V
with Chinese companies kind of makes sense on the surface.
I mean, why export your technological innovation
to a foreign adversary?
But in practice, it's not gonna hurt China nearly as much
as it's going to hurt US companies, like SiFive,
as we hurdle towards a RISC-V future.
And I cannot overstate the pace at which this is happening.
During the writing of this video,
SiFive and SophGo announced two new desktop chips
that are slated for release in 2024.
This could be a big moment for SiFive's continued growth,
particularly in the wide-scale adoption sense.
But SophGo, they've already got competing products
on the market.
Of course, you might be wondering at this point,
with our mentions of Steam and Proton,
what does all of this mean for gamers?
For now, probably not much.
Not only will you not be buying one of these
and throwing the latest GPU hotness into it,
you won't even be throwing last-gen GPU hotness into it.
We tried an AMD 6000 series card,
and no bueno, no drivers.
But that doesn't mean that you'll be limited
to the best that Milk 5 certifies the system for,
which is the RX 550.
We found that it would work with any 500 series card,
as long as you have a beefy enough power supply,
and went with an RX 580 to see how things would go.
Just note, though, that you might need
an upgraded power supply in order to get this working,
as normally the system ships with a 350-watt power supply.
But with that said, with how little power draw
we had before, maybe that would work fine anyway,
I don't know.
Oh, sick, Zenotic is working.
Wait a minute, am I in an actual game?
Oh, shoot, this is, oh, my mouse
is only sporadically working.
Are these bots, or what?
I can't, I have no idea what's happening here.
I believe those are bots.
Okay, good, now I have a chance.
Let's go, where's my FPS?
Oh, there it is, down in the bottom corner.
Hey, that's way better.
And these are better graphics than we had last time.
Hey, fragged airhead, let's go.
There's no way any human could be beaten by me right now.
The best gaming computer ever?
Certainly not.
My mouse just stopped working.
But if things continue to improve,
this could be a viable option very soon.
The biggest organization likely scared of RISC-V
is obviously Arm.
But the story goes a bit deeper than most people realize.
Arm is owned by SoftBank.
SoftBank's CEO, Masayoshi Son,
was one of Alibaba's first investors,
and until this past year,
SoftBank owned up to 24% of Alibaba.
Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba,
sat on the board of directors for SoftBank
for 13 years starting in 2007.
These two companies then were more than just close.
But that has changed drastically
in the past two or three years,
when Jack Ma said some things,
then disappeared until he didn't, but then did he.
And regardless of all of that,
under the new jackless leadership of Eddie Wu and Joe Tsai,
Alibaba's various entities seem to have doubled down
on producing their own chips separate from Arm
in line with the Chinese government's
Made in China 2025 campaign.
And RISC-V is a key part of that strategy,
allowing the Chinese government
to be free of any foreign interference
in their tech development, at least at some point.
Based on the benchmarks,
there is still a lot of work to be done.
All right, so it's been a few days,
and I think I've got something really exciting going.
Wait, we already did the Milk-V.
Yes, but I went back and did it better.
No, shut up.
Yeah, it's running.
No.
I am the first person on earth
to get Euro Truck Simulator working on a RISC-V CPU.
I mean.
I mean, no, you know what?
Yeah, let's go.
Okay, shut up, really?
We're gonna be standing here for a minute.
It's slow, but it actually does like load,
and you can almost drive a truck good.
Holy.
All right, I did crash the truck in the last game, so.
That he may have done.
Let's see if I can crash the game.
It's running at about four FPS,
which means the physics and inputs are a little funky,
but are you guys seeing this?
Running poorly is a big step toward running well.
That's why I passed gym class.
Okay, what happens if you hit a gas station?
How is the destructibility of the environments?
Not so good.
The growth of RISC-V then is all but set in stone,
at least for the next few years.
Qualcomm and Google have announced
that their next line of wearables will use RISC-V.
Manufacturer Ventana claims
that their upcoming Veyron V2 CPU
is the most powerful RISC-V processor ever,
and they intend to roll it out to data centers.
And GPU startup Imagination Technologies
is beginning to roll out their new line of RISC-V GPUs
that can do DirectX 11.
So these are still early days, but it is a heck of a start.
If you remember back to 2012,
with the first release of Windows RT for ARM,
it was notoriously fairly crap,
but then Apple released the M1 in 2020,
and people were shocked at how competent it could be
at such a low power level.
Well, if you ask me, RISC-V is a lot closer
than you would think to its M1 moment.
With a solid backer deciding
they are done paying Intel or ARM for licensing fees,
it could be your next desktop or laptop processor
virtually overnight.
All it takes is one company,
like a Google, a Huawei, or an Apple
that implements it into their ecosystem,
and boom, you've got a RISC-V processor
right there beside you.
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
check out our first look at RISC-V
and a little history lesson from 2018.