DeepComputing and Xcalibyte together brought to us the ROMA laptop which has just been put up for preorder. The computing system has entirely been based on a quad-core RISC-V processor which still hasn’t been announced as of yet. We probably wouldn’t even be talking about this laptop if the news hadn’t been shared by RISC-V International itself. However, this announcement really doesn’t make that much of a difference since the details on hardware are missing but there is too much focus on other stuff like NFTs, which most of us won’t even be interested in.
The ROMA laptop is a joint effort; whereas DeepComputing is taking care of the engineering side of things, Xcalibyte is making sure the software is tuned to the best. If we talk about the design, it is a very average looking laptop, looking like what most low powered laptops look like. However, the picture revealed seems to be only a render and there seems to be no operating system in view. But that seems okay since the laptop isn’t meant to look aesthetically pleasing; even reaching till here has been a huge milestone. It is ideal for developers to test software on this architecture before being introduced to the embedded systems.
The press release has mentioned a few of the specs. The ROMA laptop will feature a quad-core RISC-V CPU which will offer SoC and SOM upgrades for free. On top of the security enclave processor, it provides GPU and NPU acceleration for AI and video workloads. It comes with an LPDDR4X memory of 16 GB and storage worth 256 GB. It will run perfectly well on Linux OS as well.
We are glad in one way that a new architecture has been made accessible in the shape of a consumer form factor (a portable laptop in this case). Unfortunately, there isn’t enough information on the hardware yet for us to recommend a purchase like this.
Via VideoCardz