First RISC-V laptop available now for pre-order with quad-core processor and 16 GB LPDDR4X RAM

The RISC-V instruction set architecture has been around for quite some time now, and, for all intents and purposes, it is one of the better alternatives to the X86 ISA that is currently dominating the PC market. Despite its open source nature, RISC-V has not seen any meaningful mainstream adoption, but with the latest push started a few years ago, the interest in this technology has been spiking considerably. SiFive is hard at work on a few desktop PC incarnations and now we see DeepComputing and Xcalibyte collaborating to bring the first RISC-V-powered laptop.

Dubbed ROMA, the first RISC-V laptop development platform features an unannounced quad-core processor model that can benefit from free SoC and SoM upgrades. The processor comes with security enclave measures for extra protection and the laptop also benefits from a GPU / NPU accelerator for video decoding and AI workloads. For now, ROMA supports up to 16 GB of LPDDR4 / LPDDR4X RAM and up to 256 GB of storage.

DeepComputing is handling the hardware development, while XCalibyte is responsible for the software side, which supports most Linux distros. From the picture provided with the press release we can see that the laptop chassis resembles that of an ultrabook, so the processor is most likely a ULV model. Port selection includes at least one USB-C and one USB-A plus an HDMI video output. The touchpad also comes with a fingerprint scanner.

ROMA also integrates a PoS, NFT and MetaMask-style wallet, making it ideal for Web3 developers. The first 100 customers to pre-order ROMA will receive a unique NFT to mark the birth of the world’s first native RISC-V development platform laptop.

Buy the StarFive VisionFive KIT with JH7100 64-bit RISC-V processor and 8 GB LPDDR4 RAM on Amazon