The VisionFive V1 is a RISC-V alternative to Raspberry Pi and is coming soon

RISC-V SoCs are slowly but surely starting to make their mark. An open-source alternative to ARM’s proprietary RISC-based chips, they have caught the eye of Intel which is developing its own RISC-V SoC as well as Chinese companies keen to avoid any bans that have seen the likes of Huawei indirectly barred from using Arm-based chips by the US government. Unsurprisingly, StarFive is a Chinese company and has announced the VisionFive V1 RISC-V single-board computer, among the first full-featured models to hit the market.

The VisionFive V1 is situated on a 3.9-inch x 2.8-inch PCB which includes a 1.5 GHz dual-core SiFive U74 SoC. It won’t set the world on fire in terms of its performance, but it will be an ideal platform for enthusiasts and those interested in coding and exploring the chips’ AI capabilities. It also supports hardware-accelerated video decoding for 4K/60 Hz video or two 4K videos running at 30 Hz. It also comes with a generous 8 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, which suggests it is clearly targeted at the Raspberry Pi audience.

Connectivity and other ports include:

• 1 x Gigabit Ethernet

• 1 x HDMI 1.4

• 1 x 3.5mm audio

• 4 x USB 3.0

• 1 x USB Type-C (for power)

• Wi-Fi 4

• Bluetooth 4.2

• 40-pin GPIO header

• MIPI-DSI

• MIPI-CSI

The StarFive VisionFive V1 will ship with support for Fedora Linux along with other distros including Yocto, Buildrooth, FreeRTOS and Zephyr. The company says it also plans support for other operating systems in the future. No release date is currently set for the board, but it will be priced at US$149 when it does go on sale. The company will be presenting at the 2021 RISC-V Summit on December 8 where it will talk more about the VisionFive V1’s capabilities.

Buy the SparkFun RED-V Redboard RISC-V SBC from Amazon for just US$39.95.