OrangePi RV2 uses RISC-V CPU architecture, an alternative to x86 and ARM.

RV2 offers 8-core Ky X1 RISC-V AI CPU, with 2TOPS for AI tasks.

It also has two M.2 slots, a microSD slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, HDMI, and multiple RAM variants.

OrangePi has released a new single-board computer powered by a RISC-V processor. It takes some inspiration from Raspberry Pi boards, but uses the more experimental RISC-V architecture instead of ARM.

RISC-V is an open-standard Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), intended to work as an alternative to x86 (used in most desktop and laptop processors), ARM (used in most phones and tablets), and other existing CPU architectures. The difficult legacy architecture of x86 and the complex licensing of ARM has caused some companies to more seriously consider RISC-V as the computing platform of the future. So far, it’s showing the most promise in embedded hardware, and RISC-V development boards are crucial for testing software on the emerging platform.

The new OrangePi RV2 is a single-board computer, much like Raspberry Pi boards, released as a sequel to last year’s original Orange Pi RV. This model uses the 8-core Ky X1 RISC-V AI CPU, which supposedly provides 2TOPS for AI tasks without a separate NPU. That’s a far cry from the 40 TOPS found in modern Copilot+ Windows PC laptops, but not too shabby for a small and affordable development board. OrangePi says the RV2 only uses 80% of the power of a similar ARM Cortex-A55 development board.