First RISC-V laptop uses Alibaba TH1520 SoC

By Nitin Dahad, embedded.com (October 14, 2022)

A project led by RISC-V International with DeepComputing and Xcalibyte has resulted in the first RISC-V laptop. We take a look at the chip behind the laptop and the people behind the project.

Earlier this month RISC-V International announced that ROMA, claimed to be the world’s first native RISC-V development laptop, is powered by Alibaba T-Head’s TH1520 system-on-chip (SoC). The first 100 premium versions of ROMA will be delivered this year, and production is expected to ramp up to 1,000 units in Q1 2023.

The TH1520 SoC was developed by Alibaba Group’s chip development business T-Head and is based on the latter’s Wujian 600 chip development platform, which has been tailored specifically for developing edge SoCs. According to Alibaba, its enhanced CPU capability and heterogeneous architecture enables high-performance embedded and edge products, including home robots, medical imaging and video conferencing. It also includes an optimized software stack to help speed up the roll-out of products to the market. Available for licensing, the platform aims to aid global developers by reducing the development costs and shortening the design cycle of chips, which the company said makes the mass production of RISC-V based high-performance SoCs a reality.

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