Canonical has announced the preparation of separate builds of Ubuntu 24.04, specially optimized to run on the Milk-V Mars board, equipped with a 4-core 64-bit StarFive JH7110 (1.5GHz) processor based on the RISC-V architecture (RV64GC). It is noted that this is the first miniature board based on the RISC-V architecture, comparable in size to a credit card (board size 85 x 56 mm). The board is also notable for its relatively low cost for RISC-V boards—in the minimum configuration with 2 GB of RAM, the board retails for $39.
The board comes in RAM sizes of 1, 2, 4 or 8 GB (LPDDR4) and is equipped with slots for eMMC and Micro SD cards, three USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, an HDMI 2.0 port with support for 4K resolution, an RJ45 connector (Ethernet ), an M.2 E-Key slot for connecting a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module, a MIPI CSI (Camera Serial Interface) interface and a 40-pin GPIO. It is possible to connect two monitors to the board (one via HDMI, and the second via MIPI DSI) and provide power via Ethernet (PoE). Supports hardware acceleration for H.264, H.265 (4K@60fps) and JPEG decoding, as well as H.265 (1080p@30fps) and JPEG encoding.
There are two options for Ubuntu builds available for download - a pre-built boot environment for copying to an SD card and an installation image for installation on an eMMC, USB drive or NVMe. The assemblies correspond in their filling to Ubuntu Server 24.04 with the Linux 6.8 kernel. Among the limitations available in Ubuntu, the lack of support for the built-in GPU and incomplete support for PCIe are mentioned (an NVMe drive can be used, but connecting modules with Wi-Fi and an external GPU is not yet supported); of the USB ports, only USB 3.0 ports are currently supported, and the USB port 2.0 is not available.
It is noted that as part of a strategic cooperation agreement between Milk-V and Canonical, the Ubuntu distribution will be adapted to work on other Milk-V devices, including future products. The Ubuntu platform will be promoted as the primary supported and maintained system for all Milk-V board variants, with a focus on support for compute acceleration and AI engines.
In addition to Milk-V devices, specially optimized builds of Ubuntu 24.04 are also available for AllWinner Nezha, Microchip Polarfire, SiFive Unmatched, Sipeed LicheeRV Dock and StarFive VisionFive 2 boards. Builds for boards based on the RISC-V architecture are also being developed by the Debian, Armbian, Alpine, DietPi projects , Fedora and Arch Linux.
RISC-V provides an open and flexible system of machine instructions that allows you to create microprocessors for arbitrary applications, without requiring royalties and without imposing conditions on use. RISC-V allows the creation of completely open SoCs and processors. Currently, on the basis of the RISC-V specification, various companies and communities under various free licenses (BSD, MIT, Apache 2.0) are developing several dozen variants of microprocessor cores, more than a hundred SoCs and already manufactured chips. RISC-V support has been present since the releases of Glibc 2.27, binutils 2.30, gcc 7, and Linux kernel 4.15.
Source: opennet.ru
