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

[Paulo César Pereira de Andrade]

Em qua., 29 de mai. de 2024 às 13:23, Baptiste Jonglez via cfarm-users
<cfarm-users at lists.tetaneutral.net> escreveu:
>
> Hello,

  Hi,

> 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?

  Optimizations and intent to add vector abstraction to GNU Lightning, that is,
extend https://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/manual/html_node/The-instruction-set.html
for vector instructions. My goal is to have a close to real hardware
abstraction to what is provided by risc-v and I believe, sometime in the
future we should have for Loongarch.

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

  No.

> 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

Thanks!
Paulo