DeepComputing: Early Access Program for RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop 13

Took me a while to figure out that the actual pricing was $200 USD for a mainboard (you have to untick value-added services).

Definitely not the best pricing, but also not completely bad considering you get a 64GB microSD and case alongside?

Looking forwards to the next-gen mainboard they hint at in the "value-added package" as the JH7110 really is quite a weak chip (even by RISC-V standards)...

the price to functionality is pretty steep. 200 would seem about right for a dev board that supported rva23, but for a CPU without support for the extensions that the ecosystem is going to require it's hard to justify 200 for ~pi3 performance on an already outdated platform

The RVA23 spec has only just been ratified a couple of weeks ago. It will be a couple of years before there is hardware supporting it.

A suitable RVA22+V chip (SpacemiT 8 core) has only been out on dedicated dev boards for a few months. That's probably going to be their 2025Q2 main board.

Their 2025Q4 main board will be the first high performance RVA22+V one. If the chip happens ... it's struck some political (sanctions) problems.

JH7110 is the right chip for a first board to get the wrinkles ironed out. No one has ever done a 3rd party or non-x86 mainboard for Frame laptops before.

I agree that it's a good step, it just feels like it would have been a good 2022 step or a good $50 step at the end of 2024, but it just seems like too little too late to be worth the price.

Note that this is a business-focused pre-release from DeepComputing, not the pricing for general developers at release of the Mainboard.