[cfarm-users] Interest for a RISC-V host with Vector extension? (BananaPi BPI-F3 / SpacemiT K1)

[Baptiste Jonglez]

Hello,

We may have an opportunity to add the following RISC-V board to the farm:

https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-F3/BananaPi_BPI-F3
https://docs.banana-pi.org/en/BPI-F3/SpacemiT_K1

The CPU core is advertised as having "RVA22 Profile and 256-bit RVV 1.0",
that is, support for the Vector extension.

To gauge interest for this board and be able to apply for a hardware
donation, we need some feedback:

1) do you have an interest for the RISC-V Vector extension in general?

2) do you have an interest for this specific CPU core?

3) what can of work would you be able to do with this board, assuming it
   becomes available in the farm?

4) do you care about running an upstream Linux kernel on this board, or is
   a vendor kernel sufficient for your work?

We don't have any estimate about how long it would take to integrate such
a board, but it could easily take 6 months to 1 year (possibly much more if
we need to run an upstream kernel).

Thanks,
Baptiste