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by andrekandre 1249 days ago

  > It's a mess at the moment!
yea, thats for sure, but i think a lot of promise too...

from my cursory testing it seems gui performance is much better than hifive unmatched (window manager, apps, web browser)

[edit] add geekbench

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/17159543?baseli...

2 comments

> 1 Processor, 1 Core, 4 Threads

Any idea why StarFive went with this choice for an SBC? I remember POWER7 also having 4 SMT, but it felt right for a superscalar multi-core CPU.

The link in the GP comment is wrong - both SoCs have 4 cores, each with a single thread.

The reason why this SoC is faster than HiFive Unmatched seems to be down to architectural improvements.

They both use U74, but different versions.

The one in JH7110 is the 2021Q1 version, AIUI.

Besides faster, it also added B extension.

No. VisionFive2's RISC-V CPU does not have the B extension. I confirmed it on the actual device.

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 hart : 2 isa : rv64imafdc mmu : sv39 uarch : sifive,u74-mc

As you say this, I realize I can't find anywhere that it does.

I do not know why I thought it did. Possibly as U74-MC[0] supports that option.

Interestingly, I also took a look at RVA22[1], and found it requires Zbb but not the whole B.

Your /proc/cpuinfo isn't listing Z* extensions. Maybe lscpu output would be more detailed?

0. https://www.sifive.com/cores/u74-mc

1. https://github.com/riscv/riscv-profiles/blob/main/profiles.a...

Oh, I was mistaken. I've verified that at least the rev instruction works (tested on clang -march=rv64imafdcb0p94).
Ah, makes much more sense. Thanks!
Embarrassingly I thought I had a Quad-Core based on `lscpu`.

I have been meaning to make use of it but so far just as a vnc server which works well loading XFCE on the minimal desktop image.

Edit: can see below that it is indeed a quad core... Embarrassed I took an internet strangers off the cuff remark as gospel

It gets more complicated :D

Quad-core 64-bit RISC-V SiFive U74 (RV64GC) processor @ up to 1.5 GHz with 32KB D-Cache, 32KB I-cache

Single-core 64-bit RISC-V SiFive S7 (RV64IMAC) monitor core with 16KB I-cache, 8KB DTIM

Single-core 32-bit RISC-V SiFive E24 (RV32IMFC) real-time control core with 16KB I-cache

It has 4 cores with 1 thread each, rather than 1 core with 4 thread
sadly, just half of the speed of the 3 years old raspberry PI 4 ...