Framework released a new video today interviewing their CEO together with the CEO of DeepComputing. The CEO of DeepComputing mentioned at the end that they’re starting mass production of the motherboards in November.
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The post by Shiroudan was merged from another thread. And looking at the posting time, it is earlier than the post by Gmanny.
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“gotta take stuff out of my pockets I don’t wanna be too pockety”
" RISC-V Motherboard For Framework 13 Pricing Starts At $368 In Early Access, $928 For Laptop"?
Edit: Here is the store page: DC-ROMA Mainboard - DeepComputing
Apparently only for business customers as of now.
Edit 2: “* First Access - Get 50% off the next-generation mass-production mainboard, available in 2025.”
For the value added tier, they hint at a next-gen motherboard in 2025.
DeepComputing’s marketing language is as amusing as ever xD
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That’s really exciting! I’m hoping the board+laptop combo will be cheaper when it becomes available on Framework’s site.
its literally more expensive than the i5 1135g7 mainboard 
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Yeah… I’m a bit disappointed by the pricing too.
It’s the same price as the 1135G7 mainboard and has a case added, but it’s still incredibly expensive for what’s a incredibly cheap SOC.
(It took me a while to find out I had to uncheck “Value Added Services” to get the real price of the RISCV mainboard $199USD)
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It actually starts at USD$199
still, thats an absolute whackload for a dev product
I’m trying to understand the pricing, sales, and marketing here:
This is a JH7110 SoC with 8 GB RAM. I can’t specifically find what GPU it has beyond that it is made by Imagination (the specs listing on DeepComputing’s page leaves something to be desired, to say the least). That would seem to make it very comparable to the Star64, also with a JH7110, Imagination BXE-4-32-G52-2EE, and 8 GB RAM. That Star64 is around $90. This is more than double, after the sketchy options are removed. It includes various accessories, akin to a scammy camera seller, but those accessories are things many buyers probably would neither need nor want.
Perhaps more confusingly, the board seems like it would primarily be interesting to enthusiasts and hobbyists. Yet the sales are only open to ‘enterprise and business customers’. Why would an enterprise or business customer want this? What would it offer to business customers that any of the much cheaper or more powerful RISC-V SBCs would not? Why would a business be comfortable buying from this company? The laptop aspect is neat, but it seems neat to hobbyists at this point.
And this marketing… the pre-selected ‘value-added services’ seems to amount to a scam. The specs say almost nothing. It appears there’s an NDA involved for user experiences; while I might trust Framework with that, considering the sketchiness of their marketing, who would trust DeepComputing not to abuse that NDA?
This is clearly a company with very different ethics than Framework. On the one hand, it’s a bit disappointing to see them working together. On the other, in seeing Framework as trying to make an open framework for others to participate in, perhaps it’s a good thing that there’s also a sketchy company making alternative mainboards.
Discussions elsewhere (eg, here and here) have some information on the plans for mainboards DeepComputing has discussed, which apparently include four iterations of mainboards in 2025, some of which would be significantly higher performance. That would seem to make the purpose of this board for third parties even more confusing.
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To be completely fair, the $199 / €192,95 “Basic Tier” includes:
- DC-ROMA RISC-V Mainboard
- Framework & Cooler Master Case (€45)
- 2 x USB-C Expansion Card (2x €10)
- SD Card 64G
Not saying it’s cheap, but the pricing is therefore not that transparent.
If I’d be interested, I’d prefer ordering it on the FW site, then I would be able to just select what I need and not a by DeepComputing made selection of accessories.
Edit:
Oh, and shipping + customs are not included in the price.
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I would not be surprised if ‘shipping fees and customs duties are not included’ should be interpreted as also meaning that VAT is not included, so the €192,95 EU price might not be directly comparable to the VAT-inclusive prices Framework shows.
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Still, $130 (assuming the sd card is UHS - 1) is more than it should be
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Something tells me that they’ve used same hardware for the Framework compatible motherboard as in “DC-ROMA RISC-V Laptop 1” and they are selling it with an additional discount for the upcoming board that is based on “DC-ROMA RISC-V Laptop II” hardware.
I saw some demos of their first laptop and it’s suited for development for RISC-V, user expericence will be somewhat close to low-power netbooks, like EEEPC 900.
So I guess I’ll wait this one out till they release the modern board in 2025
In any case, it’s HUGE and great that they did that!
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The 1135G7 mainboard is only that inexpensive because it’s a discontinued item. Framework isn’t making any more of them, just selling out the leftover ones cheaply. Not to mention that it’s currently out of stock, at least in the US. The only 11th gen mainboard that is in stock is the 1185G7 at $349.
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yeah, I know
This is not a mass-produced consumer-ready nor even enthusiast-ready product. They don’t sell it to individual people exactly because from a consumer perspective the current offer may seem like a scam. It’s a prototype, the manufacturing is not yet fully automated and that’s why it’s expensive. It is intended for businesses that want to build products around this. For such customers a few hundred USD premium (which is there probably mostly to cover costs of manufacturing in very low volumes or even doing some stuff manually) for the early access is below their rounding error. It even says in bold red letters “Early Access Program specifically for industry and business customers”. Expecting handcrafted prototypes to be similarly priced as mass-produced stuff is a mistake.
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This RISC-V mainboard is great for a number of reasons:
- Encourages the concept of RISC-V on the desktop
- Encourages all the Linux kernel support to be up-streamed to the mainline kernel.
This is actually a pretty difficult step, and takes time to achieve. - Encourages people to test all the desktop applications with RISC-V. E.g. Firefox, libreoffice etc.
- Gets all the OS, Application software and BIOS efforts up to speed with a RISC-V desktop/laptop.
- Lays the groundwork for more powerful RISC-V CPUs for the desktop/laptop. There are 64 core RISC-V CPUs in the roadmap.
- The video interview with them says they are focusing on improving performance first. Once they have that, they will then focus on power efficiency.
- It provides them with something they can easily give a developer that will help with 1-4.
DeepComputing are doing things pretty quickly, they have achieved in months what others take 3 years to achieve.
The FW laptop has allowed DeepComputing to provide a laptop form factor with minimal development work as they only needed to do the main board, and none of the case, screen, hinge or keyboard design.
In summary, I don’t think the cost of it, or the maybe lack of availability of it to end-users is a problem. It is a means to an end in a very quick and efficient manner.
This might be the eventual path to Apple M4 level performance on a RISC-V platform.
I think the next mainboards in the roadmap are what is going to really interest end-users.
All the above info is contained in an interview with the DeepComputing CEO that was done at the Ubuntu summit 2024.
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