First RISC-V mini laptops emerge: Sipeed Lichee Console 4A available for pre-order

[Redaktion]

Sipeed's new Lichee Console 4A mini laptop features a 7-inch IPS touchscreen with 1280 x 800 resolution and is powered by a RISC-V CPU with 4 cores produced by Alibaba. It also supports up to 16 GB LPDDR4x RAM plus up to 2 GB NVMe SSD and 128 GB eMMC storage.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/First-RISC-V-mini-laptops-emerge-Sipeed-Lichee-Console-4A-available-for-pre-order.783018.0.html

[Fierce.XT]

What reason does anyone have to buy this so expensive compared to x86 laptops with all the compatibility and performance?

[Bruce Hoult]

What reason does anyone have to buy this so expensive compared to x86 laptops with all the compatibility and performance?

If you are developing RISC-V software and want to be able to do it on the go, obviously.

Or if you're simply curious and don't mind speeds similar to a Raspberry Pi 4 -- about four times slower than current x86.

Also, the power consumption is low.

[The Werewolf]

What reason does anyone have to buy this so expensive compared to x86 laptops with all the compatibility and performance?

If you are developing RISC-V software and want to be able to do it on the go, obviously.

Or if you're simply curious and don't mind speeds similar to a Raspberry Pi 4 -- about four times slower than current x86.

Also, the power consumption is low.

My immediate question is "What OS runs on this?" Clearly not Windows since I don't think they even have an IoT version that runs on RISC-V. So Linux?

And "If you are developing RISC-V software and want to be able to do it on the go, obviously." is actually a lot less obvious than you think.

Unless you're developing system level software like drivers (see "What OS runs on this?"), the software will be platform specific, not hardware specific. Given how rare RISC-V consumer computing devices are, it's hard to imagine there's a lineup of devs waiting to get their hands on one of these. So you'd develop on Intel, AMD or ARM hardware, then do a recompile to the target hardware.

And you could even test it in emulation (if anyone makes a RISC-V emulator).

As for power consumption, most laptops get 12-16hrs on a charge so unless you're living in your car (well, no since you can get an adaptor there too), that's kind of a weird argument for buying something this incompatible with, well, everything.