How "trustworthy" is the "dedicated network processing accelerator (NPU) (supports L2/L3 hardware processing, IPv4/IPv6 dual stack, 20Gbps switching capacity, full byte wire-speed forwarding)"? Is it fully "hardware", auditable, or does/could it run some blob firmware with unknown/undocumented "features"?
FYI, the previous (probably more expensive) Banana Pi BPI-F3 is faster and has more cores.
This one has 4 C908 cores @1.25GHz with VLEN=128 and the BPI-F3 has 8 X60 cores @1.6GHz with VLEN=256.<p>Both are simple in-order cores and they are likely even based on the same predicessor implementation.<p>Edit: Actually, I don't know the VLEN, but previous boards with C908 had 128-bit vectors. The IP is configurable, so it could also have a larger VLEN, or no vector support at all.<p>Edit2: It might be no vector support at all, since the device tree doesn't list support for the "V" extension: <a href="https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-RV2-SF21H8898-OPENWRT-BSP/blob/bf933540397c472f800f21d0549524bae28135ae/sf_kernel/linux-5.10/arch/riscv/boot/dts/siflower/sf21h8898-fullmask.dtsi#L34">https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-RV2-SF21H8898-OPENWRT-BS...</a>
RISC-V new hardware is alway good news. Waiting for this ultra-performance RISC-V 64bits implementation using state of the art silicon process.<p>But here, has the USB controller a device mode?
More user friendly details here with the estimated price of only USD$35! [1].<p>[1] Banana Pi BPI-RV2 Gateway Board Integrates Siflower SF21H8898 RISC-V SoC<p><a href="https://linuxgizmos.com/banana-pi-bpi-rv2-gateway-board-integrates-siflower-sf21h8898-risc-v-soc/" rel="nofollow">https://linuxgizmos.com/banana-pi-bpi-rv2-gateway-board-inte...</a>