[remcob]

> I toy with microcontrollers. For hobbyists like me, ARM processors are still the most sensible choice. I'm not expecting any shift from that for at least five years.

I started using ESP32C3s in my projects. They are cheap powerful RISC-V micros supported by Arduino SDK. IMHO it's already better than the ARM offerings, but I'm still waiting for good Rust support.

[mkj]

The ESP32C3 seem to have the same friction - closed wifi blobs? They might get supplanted by something with a more malleable software stack.

[galangalalgol]

someone told me the wifi blobs exist because of regulations prohibiting wifi chipsets from being easily modified to use illegal frequencies, but they still want to do much of the functionality in firmware so they can have more flexible asic designs that can keep up with standard changes. If that is all true, wifi blobs are unlikely to change.

[RF_Savage]

Regulatory issues are one reason. The second is that the wifi side of things might be some 3rd party IP they bought and the licencing terms prevent open sourcing it. Wifi stacks are complex and filled with edgecases. And every release just makes that moat bigger.

[sirmx100]

... . -. -.. / -- . / .- -. / . -- .- .. .-.. break .. / .... .- ...- . / .-.. --- --- -.- . -.. / ..-. --- .-. / -.-- --- ..- break 6c6f6d65696e30313031676d61696c636f6d

[josephg]

Are there any bigger RISC-V boards around yet? I'd love to goof around making a toy RISC-V operating system, but those ESP32C3s look a bit gutless (400kb of RAM? Oof.).

Ideally I'd like something specced closer to a raspberry pi.

[colejohnson66]

The HiFive Unmatched[0] from SiFive is a beast of a dev board, but with a price to match ($665 from Mouser). For a smaller Arduino-style board, the HiFive1 Rev B[1] exists as well, but it's more an MCU than CPU.

[0]: https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched

[1]: https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive1-rev-b

[elcritch]

What 400kb of RAM on an MCU?! That's a huge amount for an MCU. Arduino's started out with 2kB of SRAM. Linux also requires a MMU to run, which most's MCU's don't have.

[josephg]

Thanks; but I don’t want an MCU. I don’t even know what an MCU is. Arduino style devices aren’t interesting to me.

I want something I can run Linux, like a raspberry pi but RISC-V. I know there were some bigger development boards out there for $600+ a few years back. Is there anything in the pipes which is smaller, for hobbyist messing around?

[goosedragons]

There is at least one now called the Sipeed Nezha, costs about $115 on Aliexpress with 1GB RAM. Seems like it's similar to an older RPi.

[josephg]

Oh thanks for pointing me in the right direction. It looks like they're now shipping $20 development boards with their new chips in the Sipeed LicheeRV. 512MB of ram and linux support:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003594875290.html