ASUS Unveils the Tinker V As Their First RISC-V Board (phoronix.com) 31
An anonymous reader shares this report from Phoronix:
For over a half-decade ASUS has been selling the Tinker Board devices as their line of Raspberry Pi alternatives. To date the ASUS Tinker Board single board computers have all been Arm-based while now they have launched their first RISC-V board, the Tinker V.
The ASUS Tinker V is their first RISC-V single board computer and intended for the industrial IoT (Internet of Things) developer community. The ASUS Tinker V is set to officially run Debian Linux and Yocto while surely with time more Linux distributions will be supported.... Being IoT focused, there isn't any display support. Those interested in learning more about the ASUS Tinker V can do so via tinker-board.asus.com.
The Register notes that Asus "is offering at least five years of support for Tinker V... Dedicated on-site technical support is also available to shorten customer development cycles and accelerate application deployment." The move shows that the RISC-V open-source instruction set architecture continues to garner support. The last RISC-V Summit in San Jose saw the launch of a family of datacenter-class processors based on the architecture from Ventana Micro Systems, while XMOS unveiled new high-performance microcontrollers using RISC-V.
According to Asus, Tinker V samples will be available in Q2 of this year, but it did not disclose a date for full availability or pricing.
The ASUS Tinker V is their first RISC-V single board computer and intended for the industrial IoT (Internet of Things) developer community. The ASUS Tinker V is set to officially run Debian Linux and Yocto while surely with time more Linux distributions will be supported.... Being IoT focused, there isn't any display support. Those interested in learning more about the ASUS Tinker V can do so via tinker-board.asus.com.
The Register notes that Asus "is offering at least five years of support for Tinker V... Dedicated on-site technical support is also available to shorten customer development cycles and accelerate application deployment." The move shows that the RISC-V open-source instruction set architecture continues to garner support. The last RISC-V Summit in San Jose saw the launch of a family of datacenter-class processors based on the architecture from Ventana Micro Systems, while XMOS unveiled new high-performance microcontrollers using RISC-V.
According to Asus, Tinker V samples will be available in Q2 of this year, but it did not disclose a date for full availability or pricing.
CANbus (Score:4, Insightful)
The inclusion of a pair of CANbus I/Os is interesting here.
Not sure what I'd use it for, but I don't have it on my Pi (natively, anyhow).
Re: (Score:3)
Not sure what I'd use it for
That shouldn't stop you. Computers are like power tools: You buy them first, then look for something to do with them.
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure what I'd use it for
That shouldn't stop you. Computers are like power tools: You buy them first, then look for something to do with them.
While not nearly as fun as decommissioning a hard drive with a 30-06, one can use the power drill in the kitchen. Remember to always use some scrap lumber or obsolete book behind the drive to spare the kitchen table.
Re: (Score:1)
Hopefully more stable than original Tinkerboard (Score:4, Informative)
I have an original TinkerBoard in a box somewhere. I could never get it to consistently run in a stable manner. It would be fine for a few hours to a few days and then randomly wedge. Or sometimes it would spontaneously reboot. I tried a few different power supplies, SD cards, etc. to no avail. It's likely to wind up in the "e-waste" bin the next time I do a cleanup of my junk box(es) in my office.
So not particularly confidence inspiring along with a completely new architecture.
Re:Hopefully more stable than original Tinkerboard (Score:5, Interesting)
What really matters is how much community support there is. The Raspberry Pi guys screwed up more than once, including with the original model that had a poor USB implementation. They were able to recover because the community was there, providing a huge amount of support for both hardware and software.
ASUS is entering a crowded market, full of ARM SoCs at low prices. It may be hard to reach critical mass with this one.
Re:Hopefully more stable than original Tinkerboard (Score:4, Informative)
RasPi is currently already losing that community again with their emphasis on commercial clients. While understandable, it also means that since any relevant RasPi became pretty much unobtanium unless you're willing to pay a 200-400% markup, people are turning to the competitors that are kinda-sorta-maybe compatible, but at least they're available.
So yeah, Asus throwing its hat into this ring does make sense, and with a brand name and brand recognition behind it, they may even land a hit or two, but whether they do depends mostly on what the community will elect as the RasPi successor, i.e. what boards will get the most projects done for. Because there is one eternal truth for SBC projects: For every single person that makes one, there's hundreds that want to have it, too, but don't have the skill to do it. So what they do is to buy whatever board the person who did the project had and jump through the hoops presented in the writeup.
All it takes for RasPi to be a has-been in the maker sphere is a killer project that everyone wants and gets realized on an alternative SBC. And if Asus is smart, they'll provide that killer project themselves. Something home automation comes to mind.
Re: (Score:1)
> with their emphasis on commercial clients
I would even be one but their supply chain is unstable so I'm diving into RISC-V because competition beats IP nonsense.
On a different timeline I would have already replaced my Xeon grear with clusters of RPi compute modules on a 2U backplane but that's too much risk.
For now it's the 90's again with RISC-V boards and zip ties. This will rapidly improve.
Re: (Score:2)
What application would you go for a cluster of Pi's that would be better/cheaper than a couple nuc's? Honestly curious; I run about 6 VMs on a Nuc with at least 5x the performance per VM from what I got on a Pi4 dedicated to each VM.
Re: (Score:3)
There is a difference in expectation too that Asus has to contend with if they want to be successful here.
With the exception of the notoriously unfriendly and barely receiving of any meaningful manufacture support - the plug-computers and other kirkwood platforms RPi was new. It was the fist time many people could get reality capable machine in a single board format rather than a 'finished product, case, psu ....' that was still approachable for the beginner IE did not need special tools like JTAG adapters,
Re: (Score:3)
For that the competitors need to hit the right cost. I count myself among those who have current projects using Raspberry Pi alternatives, but the reality is I didn't stray from Raspberry Pi compatibility (sort of) precisely because no one else has met the cost requirements for small tinkering projects. This largely allows people to flip back to RPis when they become available.
Right here there's a big difference between a Raspberry Pi 4 at 30EUR and an Asus Tinkerboard at 70EUR.
So yeah. Raspberry Pi isn't l
Re: (Score:2)
Erh... even at normal retail, RPi4s ain't selling for 30 Es. That's about the price range of a RPi3.
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever so they got a $5 price increase. I bought a RPi4 for 30EUR before the supply crisis. Point is the same. Actually if you want to nitpick please do so in both directions. I quoted the price of the previous Tinkerboard, the one in the article is actually going to be closer to $150.
So sure, double the price of the RPi4 if you want, my point remains completely unchanged. It remains the cheapest option in its class.
Re: (Score:2)
Either way, the non-scalper prices for RPi4s have to my knowledge always been somewhere between 50 and 80 bucks, depending on ram. The point is, though, how does the RPi4 compare to that Asus Tinker. If it's equal and, unlike the RPi, available, it does kinda win out.
Re: Hopefully more stable than original Tinkerboar (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess my worry for industrial use would be long term availability. While the Pi guys only guarantee compatible upgrades, which in practice means you will probably need a new OS image and rebuilding your software, I'm reasonably confident that they will keep releasing physically compatible boards. Especially the compute modules.
To many other manufacturers have made one or two boards and then lost interest.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
The market is ripe for new players because Raspberry is a seriously messed up organization. Arm too. They're like sniveling little gollums with their precious "secrets" that are "too difficult" for mere electronics engineers. They don't want you to tinker with your Pi. If it breaks, buy a new one.
I mean they did stupid stuff like use off-the-shelf parts except customized in ways that regular people can not get those parts. The power supply is 5.1V otherwise it complains all the time even though a normal che
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed about the support. The RPi was always a cheap option, and yes, they screwed it up a couple of times, but we all kept going because it was cheap and easy to use.
However, there have been no RPis available for over 12 months, and probably won't be for another 12 or so (my CPC order is saying November right now, but it extends pretty much every fortnight). Some use-cases have moved over to some of the alternatives, but guess what? They don't have the support, so even though they have physical product, th
Re: (Score:2)
ASUS is entering a crowded market, full of ARM SoCs at low prices. It may be hard to reach critical mass with this one.
I kind of doubt that since it will be a specific (read: industrial) community that will be looking to procure this hardware and business-grade support.
The fastest way to convince your CIO that you made the wrong hardware decision, is to not have a support person on the other end of a phone line at 3AM when Shit Happens to a business that needs the problem resolved yesterday.
Re: (Score:2)
sell it on ebay - with said warning - lots better than junking it,
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I have an original TinkerBoard in a box somewhere. I could never get it to consistently run in a stable manner. It would be fine for a few hours to a few days and then randomly wedge. Or sometimes it would spontaneously reboot. I tried a few different power supplies, SD cards, etc. to no avail. It's likely to wind up in the "e-waste" bin the next time I do a cleanup of my junk box(es) in my office.
So not particularly confidence inspiring along with a completely new architecture.
That really requires a 3A or better power supply in my experience, I had lockups running GnuRadio until I went to as big of a power supply as I could get.
Not even close to a Pi 4 competitor (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Overpriced (>$140), under powered (1GHz single core RISCV CPU, 1 GiB DDR RAM). Whats not to like? Take a look at the StarFive 2 SBC, full disclosure the only relationship I have with StarFive is that I bought one. 4 core 1.5 Ghz RISCV CPU, 2 GiB/4 GiB/8 GiB versions with the 8 GiB version going for ~ $100. Close enough to the Pi 4, if you can find one at anywhere near retail price, to be a REAL competitor with a RISCV processor.
Agreed. Depending on pricing the Tinker Board 3 may be an interesting board, though it is also not clear yet if the GPIO header is RPi like the previous ones.
intended for industrial IoT (Score:2)
I don't see this board as a Raspberry Pi competitor. The article says it is "intended for the industrial IoT" developer community. They will be competing against the very robust and well-established STM32 product line (based on Arm Cortex) which sells for pretty cheap and comes in many different flavors. RISCV is interesting though. There's nothing wrong with some additional options in the IoT space and I hope we see lots more offerings like this.
Re: (Score:2)
Not at that price. They're competing with the embedded industrial PC guys, where $150 is a steal compared to the thousands those things usually cost. It's got to be a pretty small market though, where you've just got to run Linux but you don't really need much power.
$280 is waaay too much money (Score:2)
It looks like a really nice board. But, it's just too expensive. I am sure it's fine for lots of industrial purposes in the USA where there's lots of money floating around for such purchases, but in other places and applications people going to use some much cheaper board.