Canonical announced this Ubuntuextremely popular Linux distribution, is now officially compatible with SiPeed LicheeRVa minicomputer (or in this case micro-PC) consisting of a single board and with a RISC-V processor, which is sold at a base price of $17 per unit (for the Eurozone, taxes and the current weakness of the euro must be added).

Those who have followed the path of Canonical and Ubuntu in recent years will not be surprised by this move by the London company, because the internet of things was and continues to be one of the main axes of its business policy. This explains its strong presence in ARM devices and its moves to a place in RISC-V, an architecture published as Open Source hardware (or Open Hardware) that promises to be the next big revolution after the founding of ARM. You see, many times in the technology sector, the first mover wins.

When we dive into the details, SiPeed LicheeRV is a computer sa Allwinner D1 XuanTie C906 single-core RISC-V processor running at 1 GHz. It also has a minicomputer 512 MB RAM at 792 Hz and a microSD card reader for the data drive (to which, of course, an operating system must be added).

The SiPeed LicheeRV measures 46 x 25 millimeters and is designed to connect to an optional docking station that adds additional ports and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support. However, since it is designed for “headless” calculations (mindless counting), the docking station is basically something optional and something that the user can do without, because with a USB Type-C port and a microSD card reader, it should be enough to operate a computer that is not aimed at performing the functions of a desktop computer.

Those who want to use Ubuntu on top of SiPeed LicheeRV just download the corresponding version 22.10 image from the Canonical distribution and flash it to a microSD card. Of course, we remember that it is not for the desktop, but it can be used for an IoT context, a very modest server or even a “toy” to perform computational experiments.