How "trustworthy" is the "dedicated network processing accelerator (NPU) (supports L2/L3 hardware processing, IPv4/IPv6 dual stack, 20Gbps switching capacity, full byte wire-speed forwarding)"? Is it fully "hardware", auditable, or does/could it run some blob firmware with unknown/undocumented "features"?
FYI, the previous (probably more expensive) Banana Pi BPI-F3 is faster and has more cores.
This one has 4 C908 cores @1.25GHz with VLEN=128 and the BPI-F3 has 8 X60 cores @1.6GHz with VLEN=256.
Both are simple in-order cores and they are likely even based on the same predicessor implementation.
Edit: Actually, I don't know the VLEN, but previous boards with C908 had 128-bit vectors. The IP is configurable, so it could also have a larger VLEN, or no vector support at all.
what's device mode? From the datasheet: "This chip supports 1 USB interface, supports USB OTG protocol standard (USB2.0, compatible with USB1.1), and allows the device to operate as both a host and a peripheral. It can provide certain host detection capabilities, support host communication protocol (HNP) and conversation request protocol (SRP)."
From the DTS posted in another thread here, the board looks to be running a 5.10 Linux kernel. OpenWrt proper runs much newer kernel versions, so the board looks to be running a vendor fork of OpenWrt branched of already a while ago.
Maybe they are planning to catch back up to regular/normal/mainline OpenWrt at some point.
Banana Pi was also behind the first "official" OpenWrt product [1]. Would be very odd if there aren't any kind of plans to make more recent OpenWrt running on this device too, at least on some level.
The raw specs doesn't look impressive, but network offloading and forwarding capabilities means that the cores will sit mostly idle, even under some load.
If you want to put it to the demarcation line of your network and forget it, it's a fine device. If you want to run containers and services on it, this is not it.
From the high level, yes RISC-V is open, but as far as I can tell, When a chip is designed, nothing is preventing it from being closed like this SF21H8898
MikroTik RouterOS 7, for example, runs perfectly fine on devices with 32 MB of RAM. Not everything has to be bloated with hundreds of megabytes of Javascript running on top of Node.
> Not everything has to be bloated with hundreds of megabytes of Javascript running on top of Node.
Is that all you think memory is for? What if somebody wants to run an MITM or DNS-based content blocker for LAN clients? I can imagine loading URL blocklists into RAM for efficient evaluation taking more than the 16-24MB RAM available in the scenario you're talking about, for instance. Or what if somebody wants to fire up a NAS with an old spinning disk and use RAM for write caching?
> Or what if somebody wants to fire up a NAS with an old spinning disk and use RAM for write caching?
Then this hardware is not for you. Not everything has to line up with your expectations. Plus this thing is like $35, what do you expect? There are other capable systems like the solidrun honeycomb.
I never said that it had to [meet my expectations] or that it's optimal or that this hardware is or isn't for me. I was pointing out that saying 512MB of RAM is for Node apps is a straw man.
How "trustworthy" is the "dedicated network processing accelerator (NPU) (supports L2/L3 hardware processing, IPv4/IPv6 dual stack, 20Gbps switching capacity, full byte wire-speed forwarding)"? Is it fully "hardware", auditable, or does/could it run some blob firmware with unknown/undocumented "features"?
FYI, the previous (probably more expensive) Banana Pi BPI-F3 is faster and has more cores. This one has 4 C908 cores @1.25GHz with VLEN=128 and the BPI-F3 has 8 X60 cores @1.6GHz with VLEN=256.
Both are simple in-order cores and they are likely even based on the same predicessor implementation.
Edit: Actually, I don't know the VLEN, but previous boards with C908 had 128-bit vectors. The IP is configurable, so it could also have a larger VLEN, or no vector support at all.
Edit2: It might be no vector support at all, since the device tree doesn't list support for the "V" extension: https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-RV2-SF21H8898-OPENWRT-BS...
RISC-V new hardware is alway good news. Waiting for this ultra-performance RISC-V 64bits implementation using state of the art silicon process.
But here, has the USB controller a device mode?
what's device mode? From the datasheet: "This chip supports 1 USB interface, supports USB OTG protocol standard (USB2.0, compatible with USB1.1), and allows the device to operate as both a host and a peripheral. It can provide certain host detection capabilities, support host communication protocol (HNP) and conversation request protocol (SRP)."
>allows the device to operate as both a host and a peripheral
Likely means the device acting a s aperipheral
Yes host and device are the standard USB system design [1] terms.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#System_design
It looks good on paper, but more importantly if it couldn’t run on mainline Linux kernel I won’t buy it
OpenWrt is not enough?
From the DTS posted in another thread here, the board looks to be running a 5.10 Linux kernel. OpenWrt proper runs much newer kernel versions, so the board looks to be running a vendor fork of OpenWrt branched of already a while ago. Maybe they are planning to catch back up to regular/normal/mainline OpenWrt at some point.
Banana Pi was also behind the first "official" OpenWrt product [1]. Would be very odd if there aren't any kind of plans to make more recent OpenWrt running on this device too, at least on some level.
[1]: https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/OpenWRT-One/BananaPi_OpenWRT-O...
More user friendly details here with the estimated price of only USD$35! [1].
[1] Banana Pi BPI-RV2 Gateway Board Integrates Siflower SF21H8898 RISC-V SoC
https://linuxgizmos.com/banana-pi-bpi-rv2-gateway-board-inte...
nvme ssd slot...
Hear that, you arm vendors? You can have a low power board without being stuck with crap microsd storage...
Why not have 5 x 2.5GBe ports rather than 5 5 x 1GBe ports?
Cost perhaps?
Anyway it provides an extra 2.5GbE RJ45 port for telco uplink/downlink.
Can definitely see riscv taking this segment of the market over completely in record time. Consumer routers, pro-sumer managed switches, wifi APs etc.
Would be great to have an option with more LAN Ports.
The specs look like my multimedia Athlon XP PC from 2002, talk about embedded not being powerful enough.
The raw specs doesn't look impressive, but network offloading and forwarding capabilities means that the cores will sit mostly idle, even under some load.
If you want to put it to the demarcation line of your network and forget it, it's a fine device. If you want to run containers and services on it, this is not it.
Horses for courses, YMMV, as always.
There's not a lot of powerful RISC-V hardware out there but that's a bit beside the point.RISC-V is exciting because it's fully opensource.
RISC-V is partially open source, vendors can do whatever they feel like with extensions.
From the high level, yes RISC-V is open, but as far as I can tell, When a chip is designed, nothing is preventing it from being closed like this SF21H8898
512 MB of RAM is low, even for a board intended as a router/gateway.
MikroTik RouterOS 7, for example, runs perfectly fine on devices with 32 MB of RAM. Not everything has to be bloated with hundreds of megabytes of Javascript running on top of Node.
> Not everything has to be bloated with hundreds of megabytes of Javascript running on top of Node.
Is that all you think memory is for? What if somebody wants to run an MITM or DNS-based content blocker for LAN clients? I can imagine loading URL blocklists into RAM for efficient evaluation taking more than the 16-24MB RAM available in the scenario you're talking about, for instance. Or what if somebody wants to fire up a NAS with an old spinning disk and use RAM for write caching?
> Or what if somebody wants to fire up a NAS with an old spinning disk and use RAM for write caching?
Then this hardware is not for you. Not everything has to line up with your expectations. Plus this thing is like $35, what do you expect? There are other capable systems like the solidrun honeycomb.
I never said that it had to [meet my expectations] or that it's optimal or that this hardware is or isn't for me. I was pointing out that saying 512MB of RAM is for Node apps is a straw man.
What's with the hostility in this thread?
There is no hostility.
Also I have a low power pc that's acting as a router and running a few other services on it in my home. It's currently using 180 Mb ram.
Ofc it probably can't run services done in Node, but then running those would defeat the point of a low power pc...