Scaleway launches hosted RISC-V servers for 15.99 Euros per month
Scaleway launched some Arm servers based on Marvell Armada 370/XP quad-core Cortex A9 processor in 2015 before phasing those out a few years ago, and they are now just offering AMD and Intel-based servers and hosted Apple Mac computers based on the M1 Arm chip. But the company has decided to try something new again with the EM-RV1 servers based on Alibaba T-Head TH1520 quad-core RISC-V processor, 16GB RAM, and 128GB eMMC flash and running Debian, Ubuntu, or Alpine.
Note the EM-RV1 instances are part of Scaleway Labs so it’s mostly for evaluation, but the company also says the RISC-V server can be useful for testing RISC-V applications, CI/CD, and AI applications thanks to the 4 TOPS NPU found in each TH1520 SoC. You can get started on the product page where you’ll also find additional information and extra benchmarks.
I didn’t try the Scaleway RISC-V server myself, but Bret Weber did and he reported his experience setting up an instance with Ubuntu 23.10 (GNU/Linux 5.10.113+ riscv64) and ran several benchmarks. Scaleway says the EM-RV1 servers have been designed in-house with “the soldering of electronic components, the development of specific firmware, and the manufacture of the enclosures using 3D printing”, but Bret also noted the arrangement of the ports on the first photo in this post looks very similar to the Sipeed Lichee Cluster 4A box.
FOSSForce:
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EU Cloud Provider Adds Bare-Metal Open-Source RISC-V CPU’s
Another cloud provider is jumping on the RISC-V bandwagon.
When I first started writing about RISC-V back in 2018, folks laughed (or at least chuckled) when I suggested that the open-source instruction set architecture would eventually be powering servers and desktops. At that time the ISA, which had just moved from UC Berkeley where it was created into the real world, was mainly being used as controllers and other stuff peripheral to the CPU. Being the main driver on servers and desktops were well out of its capabilities.
Those days are over.
On Thursday, the cloud provider Scaleway announced the launch of Elastic Metal RV1, a range of RISC-V servers ready to be fired-up and put to work for customers wanting bare-metal access to RISC-V processing. The price? 0.042 Euros per hour, or 15.99 Euros a month (which comes to $17.29 in greenbacks).
CNX Software:
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Scaleway launches hosted RISC-V servers for 15.99 Euros per month
French company Scaleway has just launched the “Elastic Metal RV1” bare metal servers which it claims to be the world’s first RISC-V servers available in the cloud with pricing at 0.042 Euros per hour, or 15.99 Euros a month excluding VAT.
Scaleway launched some Arm servers based on Marvell Armada 370/XP quad-core Cortex A9 processor in 2015 before phasing those out a few years ago, and they are now just offering AMD and Intel-based servers and hosted Apple Mac computers based on the M1 Arm chip. But the company has decided to try something new again with the EM-RV1 servers based on Alibaba T-Head TH1520 quad-core RISC-V processor, 16GB RAM, and 128GB eMMC flash and running Debian, Ubuntu, or Alpine.