First RISC-V mainboard for modular laptop

A RISC-V processor board is available for the first time for the modular Framework laptop as a development system.

The DC-Roma mainboard from DeepComputing can be used with the Framework Laptop 13. The board uses the StarFive JH7110 processor, based on four U74 RISC-V cores from SiFive. with 8GB of LPDDR4 soldered memory and uses MicroSD/eMMC storage. and runs Ubuntu or Fedora Linux.

“This is very much a developer-focused board to help accelerate maturing the software ecosystem around RISC-V, so we recommend waiting for future RISC-V products if you’re looking for a consumer-ready experience,” says Framework.

The mainboard comes from the first RISC-V laptop design developed by DeepComputing in 2022. That has since been superseded by a system with an 8 core processor.

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“To make it easier to jump into using a new partner-developed Mainboard or reusing an old one, we’re also introducing the Framework Laptop 13 Shell today. This is a complete Framework Laptop 13 chassis with everything except for the Mainboard, memory, storage, and Wi-Fi,” it said.

The mainboard is available in the UK through the Framework store