The world’s first RISC-V notebook ROMA opens for pre-order, the processor can be upgraded

IT House reported on July 2 that the world’s first notebook ROMA using the RISC-V instruction set architecture has begun pre-orders. The notebook has not yet been priced and is expected to start shipping in September.

The ROMA notebook is manufactured by DeepComputing and Xcalibyte in Shenzhen. For the detailed specifications of the notebook,The pre-order interface shows that ROMA will use a quad-core RISC-V processor, Arm SC300 security processing unit, GPU/NPU accelerator for video work, support for 16GB of LPDDR4 or LPDDR4X memory, and 256GB of storage. The machine will support most RISC-V distributions, and has a RISC-V key, guess it may be a shortcut key or custom key for a development environment. The quad-core RISC-V processor on the ROMA notebook has not yet been released, so its detailed specifications are not yet known. It is worth mentioning that the first 100 customers who pre-order ROMA will get NFT and can engrave their name or company name on ROMA.

According to The Register, DeepComputing and Xcalibyte said,ROMA notebook will be the industry’s first laptop with an upgradeable processor. Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, said the ROMA laptop will serve as “an important bridge between a development board and a RISC-V-based business laptop that can be used for everyday work.” At the Spring 2022 RISC-V Week event in Paris, France in early May, Philipp ToMSIch, chairman of software development at RISC-V International, showed a photo of a laptop, though it wasn’t certain if the laptop was a ROMA.

IT House learned that RISC-V is an open source instruction set architecture (ISA) based on the reduced instruction set (RISC) principle. The project started at the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. On June 21, the RISC-V International Organization announced 2022 Approval of the first four specifications and extensions in 2019.