This CPU is FREE! - Milk-V Pioneer with RISC-V

Who doesn’t like a free CPU? The answer is a bit more complicated than you’re imagining. This computer might look small and unassuming, but inside it is a motherboard you’ve never seen before, a 64-core processor unlike anything you currently own, and the technology behind it could have far reaching geopolitical implications in the very near future. It is the subject of trade sanctions, stock dumps, and could lead us into the next technology-fueled cold war. But can it game?

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

FOLLOW US
---------------------------------------------------  

MUSIC CREDIT
---------------------------------------------------
Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
---------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
1:31 What is this thing?
2:37 What is an Instruction Set Architecture?
3:39 Using the Milk-V Pioneer
4:56 RISC vs CISC
5:55 ARM and RISC-V
6:28 Steam with box64
7:25 Why not just use ARM?
7:58 Looking at the hardware
9:52 Who is behind this CPU?
10:41 US vs China
12:03 What does it mean for gamers?
13:04 ARM's Race
14:49 Euro Truck Simulator 2
15:56 The Future/Conclusions

[LinusTechTips]

At 16:15 we refer to Imagination Technologies as a "GPU Startup". With a legacy dating back to 1985, Imagination Technologies is the brains behind the PowerVR GPU series among other achievements. Apologies for the mix-up in the video; they're definitely more than just a "GPU Startup."

[personinousapraham]

Student at UC Berkeley here! RISC-V was created by researchers here, and it's made our way down to the introductory curriculum. The final project of our lower division (required introductory) computer architecture course involves making a slightly simplified RISC-V processor out of basic logic gates! Super cool experience

[yak_]

I'm studing Computer Engineering at a public polytechnic university and they recently switched to RISC-V as the primary real-world academic example for many courses that discuss ISAs, assembly, and computer acutecture. I watched this video with a SiFive dev board sitting on my desk.

[yoshiman]

Its so strange to see real cpus running RISC-V, because being in university, and in a cpu design class we used Verilog HDL and FPGA's to implement the RISC-V instruction set from the ground up. Not saying it was easy though, so I have a huge respect for these guys (Chinese or American), but Verilog did a lot of the heavy lifting.

[fedora]

We're glad to see that all the work our RISC-V team has been doing is showing, great video 💙

[Felice_Enellen]

Gotta say, as a gamedev who frequently has had to work directly with assembly language, RISC has probably been my favorite to work with, mostly because you're almost never shooting yourself in the foot by not using the esoteric instruction you didn't realize existed or works the way it does in order to do the thing you're doing manually with multiple other instructions. You just accept that you have a pretty good instruction set and you'll need multiple instructions to do most things, and that's fine if it means the CPU itself can _process_ instructions faster or with a much deeper pipeline, which is the goal with RISC.

[hLu]

No, nothing is free. Except this fabulous segue to our sponsor!

[ap]

Huge kudos to Tanner. And also props to LTT for giving him the ability to keep working on it. It's clear the current pace of videos is giving the team time to work on projects and videos so that they arrive in a more polished and finished form. Have there been times in the last little while that I've missed having a new LTT video to watch? Yeah, probably. But it's nowhere near the satisfaction that I get when I see the payoffs. It may have only been a post script on the video, but Euro Truck Simulator running felt huge and I hope these kinds of moments are continually possible. Way to go Tanner and the rest of LTT.

[davidgoodnow]

*NOTE:* The same Linux kernel 6.2 that introduced RISC V support ALSO introduced *FULL SUPPORT* for Intel ARC video cards -- so yes, *THAT* is your first choice for video card!

[CameronTacklind]

The "dust covers" on the SATA ports are probably to help pickup the part when assembling the mainboard. Having a flat top surface is easier for the vacuum pickup tools. They're just saving an assembly step by not removing them.

[sagerobot]

Bravo! This is is top content you guys. Seriously, everyone on the LTT team should be proud of this video, its a banger. This is the result of your improved workflow. Whatever happened to make this video happen double down on it. I love the amount of research that went into this, it shows.

[AgentOrange]

Had Nvidia successfully purchased ARM, I suspect RISCV would have gotten a huge surge in development and adoption. (From companies not wanting to deal with Nvidia) Which would have probably been the only upside to that acquisition.

[RILDIGITAL]

This RISC-V stuff is some heavy tech. Gotta say, it's cool seeing how far it's gotten. That whole scene of running Steam, even though it was slower than a turtle, felt like catching a glimpse of the future for us gamer folks.

[cromefire_]

I think a misconception as that arm made it easier to port to RISC-V because both are are risc, but what makes it easier is actually just that people are more used to supporting x64 and arm over the last years (especially on Linux) and as a developer it's then easy to just add a 3rd option. For modern developers the adjustment wasn't the instruction set, but just to generate 2 or more builds instead of one.

[xXRedTheDragonXx]

As a dev, I'm actually really excited for RISC-V. It's a really cool concept with not a ton or push behind it right now, but there's an immense amount of promise. I hope we'll see it go from a niche platform to something actually used by desktops/laptops in the next few years!

[jaz]

1:20 "most of its specs are pretty normal"
*immediately mentions the 128 gb of ram*

[themegjake]

This is one of those LTT videos where I am far too ignorant to fully understand what Linus is saying half the time but they still manage to A. Keep me interested throughout the length of the video and B. Inspire me to read up a little bit on the subject and learn some things. I was especially interested in the geopolitical implications, since these sorts of things tend to get lost in the politics news cycle.

[Turpentinefab]

You should 3d print a plastic bit to go in the screwdriver so you can use it to point to stuff on a pcb without risking a short.

[annoorange]

LTT group is delivering on the promises that they made after the one week shutdown. content these days is more informational, while still having LTT entertainment. Great job guys, more videos like this!

[radornkeldam]

Not all of RISC-V is free or open source.
There's a baseline that is, of course, but then, many of the highperformance extensions you'll see popup will probably be propietary to one manufacturer or another, and it's yet to be seen whether any of them become free/open like the main spec, particularly those that eventually succeed in the market. It's probable there will be licensing costs to the most desirable extensions to RISC-V.