Progress was made, finally got my AMD GPU properly working on my #MilkV #Megrez, and #Blender even works pretty ok on this #RISC_V #RISCV board. Next I will put #Xonotic on a test, just need to compile it. #OpenArena from the repos sadly segfaults.

The docs say that using the "ondemand" power governor it can drop down to 400 MHz, and I'm looking at btop and I see lows of around 500. I also see it go down to 100 or even 24 MHz (this has to be a measurement error).

Next: put it all in the dying desktop's case.

#milkv #megrez #riscv

The operating system is a Debian trixie derivative. Out of the box, it has Firefox 131.0.2 and Xfce 4.18. apt-get install build-essential gave me gcc-14; other items in the repos: nodejs 20.17.0, emacs 29.4, golang 1.23. Elixir's still at 1.14.0 (aside: erlang won't get a JIT for RISC-V any time soon), Python's at 3.12, rustc 1.80.1 (but of course you can use rustup).

Anyway, on to some benchmarks. glmark2-es2 reports a score of 1714, which is surprisingly 38% higher than @geerlingguy 's benchmark of the HiFive Premier P550.

My real test is compiling sbcl; it's not in Debian or Ubuntu's repositories for RISC-V. I bootstrap it with GNU CLISP, and then rebuild it with itself, with sh ./make.sh --with-sb-doc --without-sb-thread. Unfortunately, I believe the build is single-core; I'm not sure if it's possible to use all the cores on my system for it.

Times to rebuild sbcl with itself, including modules:

Lichee Pi 3A (Ubuntu 24.04 derivative): 30 minutes
VisionFive 2 (Ubuntu 24.04):            20 minutes
Megrez (Debian trixie derivative):      12 minutes
Ryzen 9900x (Ubuntu 24.04):              1 minute

So, progress, but a long way to go.

(Incidentally, both the Megrez and my desktop have 6400 memory.)

#milkv #megrez #riscv #sbcl

My 16 GB Milk-V Megrez arrived earlier this week. I had a spare sdcard for the OS image, but didn't have an SSD to install everything on. I went out and bought that today, and hooked everything up using my dying desktop's power supply (650w is overkill for this board).

It booted off the sdcard, and I partitioned the SSD and copied everything over. I manually modified /etc/fstab and /etc/default/u-boot on the SSD to point to the new filesystems, ran u-boot-update inside a chroot, and popped the sdcard.

I did it this way instead of dd'ing the image to the SSD as described in the docs because I wanted a larger swap partition. I wonder if this system supports suspend/hibernate (added to Linux 6.4 for RISC-V).

I/O isn't fast, but it'll work:

# hdparm -t --direct /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 1020 MB in  3.00 seconds = 339.89 MB/sec
# 

The board has an M2 slot, but it's for SATA, not NVMe. I had a cheap PCIe to NVMe adapter, so I installed a 1 TB drive on it, and repeated the above exercise to boot off that. The boot order appears to be sdcard, nvme/pci, ssd.

# hdparm -t --direct /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 1570 MB in  3.00 seconds = 523.25 MB/sec
# 

I'm not sure if it's because the motherboard has a slow PCIe slot (it's PCIe Gen 3) or my adapter is slow.

#milkv #megrez #riscv

Ok #RISCV still clearly is meant for devs and explorers but dang the #MilkV #Megrez is the most finicky boards I worked with so far, I get the feeling this is very much rushed out due Sophgo not being able getting out it's newest chip but the Eswin SoC is still way better then anything out there atm and a big improvement from my current SBCs.

It's really a bummer the Milk-V Oasis had to be put on hold, but this board still gives a glimpse of what's to come don't think RISC-V is far away from being a everyday usable product.

Milk-V Megrez mini ITX board with EIC7700X RISC-V chip now available for $199

The Milk-V Megrez is a mini ITX motherboard powered by an ESWIN EIC7700X processor featuring four SiFive P550 RISC-V (RV64CG) processors cores, Imagination AXM-8-256 graphics, and an NPU that delivers up to 20 TOPS of AI performance.

First unveiled in August, the board is now available for purchase from ARACE for $199 and up.

The starting price is for a model with 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory soldered to the mainboard, but you can also buy a 32GB model  for $269.

Measuring 170 x 170mm (6.7″  x 6.7″), the Milk-V Megrez should fit in any computer chassis designed for mini ITX boards, allowing you to build your own RISC-V computer. And while the memory is not designed to be user upgradeable, the board does have plenty of expansion options including:

• 1 x PCIe X8 connector (PCIe 3.0 x4)
• 1 x M.2 E-Key for a wireless module
• 1 x M.2 M-Key (PCIe 2.0 x2)
• 1 x SATA connector
• 1 x eMMC connector
• 1 x microSD card reader

Ports include:

• 1 x HDMI 2.0
• 4 x USB 3.0 Type-A host
• 2 x Gigabit Ethernet
• 1 x 3.5mm audio input
• 1 x 3.5mm audio output

The board also has a 12V DC power input, support for a 24-pin ATX power supply, and connectors for a fan and CR1220 RTC battery, among other features.

via LinuxGizmos

#megrez #milkV #milkVMegrez #miniItx #riscV