PINE64 Confirms the PineTab-V, Its RISC-V "Vaguely Functional" Tablet, Is No April Fool's Joke

Open hardware specialist PINE64 has confirmed that its announcement, on April 1, of a new tablet based on the free and open source RISC-V architecture was not a joke — and that it'll be available to order this month, albeit for early adopters happy to work on the software themselves.

When PINE64 confirmed the opening of orders for the Star64, its first high-performance single-board computer to be based around the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) courtesy of a quad-core StarFive JH7110 system-on-chip (SOC), the company also teased a RISC-V variant of its upcoming PineTab 2 tablet computer — but in language, including the promise of unicorn power, which suggested an April Fool's joke.

Now the company has clarified that it was entirely serious — about everything except the unicorns, at least. The PineTab-V is, indeed, a real product, and will launch alongside the Arm-based PineTab 2 later this month.

"The 'V' stands for 'very early' or 'vaguely functional' and potentially even 'vociferously viperous' (yeah, I bet you had to look it up even if you're a native speaker, and no, it doesn't make sense – I'm aware)," claims PINE64's Lukasz Erecinski. "The PineTab-V is identical to the PineTab2 in all ways but the SOC. It features the same chassis, LCD panel, memory and storage configurations and even SKU price-points.

"There is one more thing you should know about the PineTab-V after all," Erecinski continues. "While it walks and quacks like PineTab2, it sure as heck isn't an Arm machine. You are basically buying into an idea, a vision, a dream. Indeed, unlike its Arm brethren it doesn't even boot Linux as of today — at least not as far as I know. So if you are in the market for an open, high-quality and sexy looking tablet that doesn't work since the software for it is a-way-of from pre-Alpha then you'll be thrilled to know we've got you covered!"

PINE64 has confirmed the tablet is based on the same JH7110 SOC as the Star64, giving it four SiFive U74 64-bit RISC-V cores running at up to 1.5GHz and an Imagination BXE-2-32 graphics processor — though has not clarified what makes it unable to boot the Linux distributions already compatible with the SOC. The company has, however, announced that the tablet will feature a black chassis to differentiate it from the Arm-based PineTab 2 in silver-gray.

More information on the PineTab-V is available on the PINE64 blog, with orders due to open April 11th starting at $159.