While the Orange Pi RV RISC-V SBC introduced at the Orange Pi Developer Conference 2024 last year is yet to be launched (should be up in a few days), the company has just launched the Orange Pi RV2 powered by the Ky X1 octa-core RISC-V SoC with a 2 TOPS AI accelerator, up to 8GB LPDD4X, optional eMMC flash moduyle, two M.2 sockets for storeage, dual gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 5, and more.
While RISC-V has made a lot of progress over the years, Linux RISC-V SBCs were often synonymous with relatively expensive hardware for developers, since software is often unsuitable for production, at least for applications using graphics. The Orange Pi RV2 addresses the cost issue since the octa-core RISC-V SBC sells for just $30 to $49.90 depending on the configuration.
Orange Pi RV2 specifications:
- SoC – Ky X1
- CPU – 8-core 64-bit RISC-V processor
- GPU – Not mentioned
- VPU – Not mentioned
- AI Accelerator – 2 TOPS
- System Memory – 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB LPDDR4X
- Storage
- Optional 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash module
- 128Mbit (default) or 256Mbit SPI flash
- 2x M.2 M-Key sockets (PCIe 2.0 x2) for NVMe SSD (one 2280, the other 2230)
- MicroSD card slot (SDIO 3.0)
- Video Output
- HDMI 2.0 up to 1920×1440 @ 60 Hz
- 4-lane MIPI DSI connector
- Dual independent display support
- Camera I/F – 2x 4-lane MIPI CSI camera connector
- Audio
- 3.5mm headphone jack using ES8388 audio codec
- Audio output via HDMI port
- Networking
- 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports via YT8531C-CA controller
- WiFi 5.0 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE via Ampak AP6256 module
- USB
- 3x USB 3.0 ports
- USB2.0 host/device port
- USB 2.0 host via 4-pin header
- Expansion
- 26-pin expansion header with GPIO, UART, I2C, SPI, PWM, etc.
- 2x M.2 (PCIe Gen2 x2) sockets for SSDs or other add-on modules
- Debugging – 3-pin (3.3V) serial debug header
- Misc
- BOOT, RESET, and Power buttons
- 2-pin connector for RTC battery (1.25mm pitch)
- Power Supply
- 5V/5A via USB Type-C port
- 2-pin connector 5V/1A output; can also be used as a fan connector.
- Dimensions – 89 x 56 mm
Orange Pi says the RV2 SBC supports Ubuntu 24.04, but a Chinese website also mentions OpenHarmony 5.0 OS support with DeepSeek R1 (distilled) models. I could not find any information about the Ky X1 SoC. The product page for the board mentions the single-core integer performance of the RISC-V core is 130% of that of the Arm Cortex-A55 (at the same frequency, I assume), while the power consumption is only 80% of the Cortex-A55 core.
Despite the presence of HDMI and MIPI DSI display interfaces and two camera inputs, there’s no mention of the 3D GPU or VPU for hardware video encoding or decoding, so it’s unclear whether those are present in the X1 SoC. Orange Pi also tells us target applications include NAS, commercial electronic products, intelligent robots, smart home, industrial control, and edge computing, none of which necessarily require a GPU or VPU. Sadly, the documentation section on the product page is only a placeholder, and all icons pointing to empty folders on Google Drive for now.
Provided software support is adequate, the Orange Pi RV2 could replace Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 boards in headless applications at a much lower cost depending on the use case since it already comes with two Ethernet ports and M.2 sockets that would require additional expansion HATs or USB dongles on the Raspberry Pi SBCs.
Three variants of the Orange Pi RV2 are available:
- 2GB RAM for $30.00
- 4GB RAM for $39.90
- 8GB RAM for $49.90
You’ll find all three models on Aliexpress (note some adblockers will remove that link), and the Orange Pi RV2 is also listed on Amazon, but currently unavailable.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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I guess it could have some (limited) success in routing applications, e.g. home firewalls, with the two GbE ports for $30. Add $10 for basic NVME storage, and as usual with Orange Pi, you won’t find any enclosure so this will have to be left on a shelf 🙂
> you won’t find any enclosure so this will have to be left on a shelf 🙂
https://www.printables.com/search/models?q=tag%3Aorangepi
Sorry but these are not enclosures but downloadable models for enclosures. Not everyone has a 3D printer nor is willing to spend a week-end trying to print an enclosure that’s worth $3 at best. That’s what I’ve always liked with FriendlyELEC and now Radxa as well, the enclosure turns a development board into a ready-to-use device, and it must definitely be an option at order time.
Still waiting for an enclosure for my Radxa A5E 🙂
Should have been 2×2.5GBit to have any interest in router space.
And even then, you’re competing against cheap routers like Zyxel T56, that could be had for as low as 30€.
Oh interesting, I had missed that device. I’m seeing it for about twice the price but the point remains that it’s a better offering for that price range (and comes with an enclosure).
When I looked them up, the 4 GB variant was 2.5x the price of the 2 GB an and the 8 GB variant was over 3x the price. Not too cost effective!
Once they ship to Regenbogenland, I will get one.
Probably ky x1 is spacemit k1…
The PMIC is a Spacemit P1 so most likely yes.
Note that they don’t say it has an AI accelerator or an NPU. They just say that the CPU is fast enough to achieve 2 TOPS…
I have a Milk-V Jupiter which built around the Spacemit K1. The specs of this Ky X1 is identical or almost identical. I think it is a rebranded or an updated version of the Spacemit SoC.
The Spacemit SoC doesn’t have a dedicated NPU. The trick is that one of the 2 CPU clusters has hardware implemented matrix multiplication in the vector unit. Therefore 8 CPU cores can achieve 2 TOPS. That means 1 CPU core with 256 bits vector registers has 0.25 TOPS. Spacemit documentation: https://github.com/space-mit/riscv-ime-extension-spec
Spacemit calls it AI fusion. Actually, RISC V has an insteuction set extension (Integrated Matrix Extension) in development which has the same goal.
So we now have two RISC-V from OrangePi:
OrangePi RV2
8-core RISC-V AI CPU, Provides 2TOPS CPU fusion for general purpose computing power, Deeply adapted to DeepSeek
OrangePi RV
RISC-V 4-Core up to 1.5GHz；2GB / 4GB / 8GB LPDDR4；USB3.0*4
It’s funny how “runs deepseek” has become a marketing term. Anything can run deepseek models but running them well or running the full 671b model is another thing. “Deeply adapted to Deepseek“ means nothing
Exactly! It’s just a buzzword, like 5G was years ago.
BTW, only the 671b model is the Deepseek R1. The smaller ones are Qwen and Llama models with transfer learning (“distilled”) from R1.
My Spacemit chip can run smaller variants (0.5-3 billion parameters) at an acceptable speed. However 2 TOPS is not much. My RTX3070 has around 150 TOPS and way faster.
Going by SGLang recent 2025/01 “news”, there’s DeepSeek-specific optimizations to be had at least for inference on AMD and Nvidia GPUs: https://github.com/sgl-project/sglang/blob/1baa9e6cf90b30aaa7dae51c01baa25229e8f7d5/README.md?plain=1#L23
So, it’s very likely running deepseek isn’t just a marketing claim and it’s actually referring to real software stack work.