With global stocks of Raspberry Pi not being so plentiful, Raspberry Pi alternatives are becoming more and more attractive to makers. StarFive’s VisionFive 2 RISC-V SBC that crowdfunded over the summer is finally available to preorder in several configurations depending on what your networking needs are, with plenty of Linux support.
The board(opens in new tab) is an upgrade from the VisionFive 1(opens in new tab) . VisionFive2 is built around SiFive’s U74 quad-core 64bit RV64GC running at 1.5Ghz. It’s almost the same chip as in the VisionFive 1, but that was a dual-core version. There’s a choice of RAM – 2, 4 or 8GB of LPDDR4 – and an Imagination Technologies(opens in new tab) GPU that supports OpenGL, OpenCL and Vulkan. The VisionFive 1 was fixed at 8GB of RAM, and didn’t have a GPU.