Ubuntu 24.04 is now available for the Milk-V Mars RISC-V single board computer (SBC).
RISC-V is an open-source processor specification, allowing anyone to access its design to create their own chips without paying licensing fees or royalties. Much like a Linux distro, people are able to collaborate, contribute, and build on RISC-V to improve it.
And while ARM (which I’m sure you’ve heard of) and RISC-V fall under the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) umbrella, RISC-V touts a unique, modular architecture. Its base instruction set is extensible, allowing it to be tailored or optimised for specific uses.
Given these open-source synergies, it’s no surprise that Linux support for RISC-V is already in a decent state and improving with each successive Linux kernel release.
The release of affordable yet capable RISC-V computers like the Milk-V Mars will help broaden the appeal and use-cases for the tech, helping it land in the hands of resourceful hardware hackers, enthusiasts, and engineers who can unlock its potential.
And thanks to a new partnership with MilkV, the makers of the Milk-V Mars SBC, Ubuntu is to become reference OS for the company’s new RISC-V products — a smart team-up since Ubuntu already runs on a number of other RISC-V devices.
Milk-V Mars – a RISC-V Pocket Rocket
Despite being no larger than a credit card, the Milk-V Mars packs in a fair, including a 64-bit StarFive JH7110 processor (quad-core up to 1.5GHz; RV64GC), Imagination BXE-4-32 GPU with support for OpenCL 1.2, OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.2, and up to 8GB LPDDR4 RAM.
It has an onboard video processing unit able to handle H.264 & H.265 4Kp60 decoding, H.265 and 1080p30 encoding, and JPEG encoding/decoding.
Although it has no onboard storage (bar a writable boot ROM) it offers an eMMC module slot and a microSD card slot; an M.2 E-Key slot for Bluetooth & Wi-Fi modules; 4x USB ports, HDMI 2.0 out, 40-pin GPIO, and RJ45 ethernet (with PoE available via an optional HAT).
And sitting on top of all of that is Ubuntu 24.04 Server.
“Ubuntu is one of the most classic and popular operating systems, and Milk-V Mars is an excellent SBC product for developers, integrating high-performance GPU and rich interfaces,” says Ke Yiran, Vice President at the Shenzhen MilkV Technology Co., Ltd.
“We are delighted to collaborate with Canonical to deliver optimised Ubuntu on Milk-V Mars, which accelerates innovation and time to market for developers.”
Read more on this ‘strategic cooperation agreement’ between the companies on the Canonical blog.
If you’re already own a Milk-V Mars you can download an Ubuntu 24.04 server image from the Ubuntu RISC-V downloads page (which also has links to more information should you need it).
Installing a GUI desktop on top of an Ubuntu Server image is possible. In theory one could use a RISC-V SBC as a desktop PC. But neither software experience nor hardware performance are yet there. Plus, the onboard GPU in this SBC is not supported in Ubuntu.
But the more RISC-V devices which filter out, the more developers, tinkerers, and hackers push the limits of what they can do on both software and hardware resides, the sooner things will progress — so watch this space!