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

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 12:23 PM Baptiste Jonglez via cfarm-users
<cfarm-users at lists.tetaneutral.net> wrote:
>
> 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?

Yes.

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

Yes.

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

SIMD on RISC-V to speed up algorithms.

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

No. I don't have a dog in this fight.

> 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).

To add to (1), it would be nice to get my hands on a RISC-V machine
with security extensions too, like AES or SHA.

Jeff