PINE64 Pledges to "Commit to the RISC-V Platform," Teases RISC-V Quartz64 Model-A Alternative

Open hardware specialist PINE64 has announced a decision to "commit to the RISC-V platform," and has teased a single-board computer based around an as-yet unannounced system-on-chip, which it claims will offer competitive performance to its Arm-based Quartz64 Model-A.

PINE64 first teased a planned RISC-V single-board computer back in February 2021, after the company released a soldering iron — the Pinecil — with an integrated RISC-V microcontroller. "Our first [RISC-V] SBC will feature two RISC-V CPUs, the main one being a[n Alibaba T-Head XuanTie] C906 64-bit SoC coupled with an auxiliary 32-bit BL602 SoC for Wi-Fi and BLE," Lukasz Erecinski promised at the time.

What has been unveiled today, however, appears to be a different beast. "The board will premiere in our signature Model-A form factor, feature CPU performance which falls somewhere in the neighborhood of the Quartz64, offer plenty of IO, and sport a price-tag similar to that of the Quartz64," Erecinski pledges "In a nutshell, a Quartz64 Model-A type board but with a RISC-V SoC."

The Quartz64 Model-A is a quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 machine with an Arm Mali G52 MP2 GPU and up to 8GB of RAM, starting at $59.99 for the 4GB variant — making it considerably more powerful than the single-core C906-based device Erecinski had originally promised. Sadly, that also comes at a cost: The C906-based SBC was expected to come in at $15 per unit, but PINE64 now appears to be going upscale with a more powerful but also more expensive design.

There are technical details that Erecinski has not yet shared, including what features the RISC-V cores will offer and how many cores it will have. He has, however, confirmed that the system-on-chip will feature Imagination Technologies' BXE-2-32 GPU IP, will come with 4GB or 8GB of RAM, and will include USB 3.0, PCI Express, and dual gigabit Ethernet connectivity — "but," he warns, "I am not certain if there are plans to expose both [Ethernet ports] on the PCB."

Those who were eager for the cut-price $15 RISC-V SBC originally promised can take heart in the news that PINE64 isn't stopping at the Quartz64 competitor: "While we don’t have set-in-stone plans regarding the platform, be on the lookout for more RISC-V hardware offerings from now through 2023," Erecinski writes.

"We have some candidate devices for a RISC-V conversion and ideas for future iterations of hardware based on the architecture, which is something I believe many of you will find exciting. In short: We have made a decision to commit to the RISC-V platform."

More details are available in the PINE64 June community update — along with a riddle that, once solved, reveals the name of the device.