The world's first line of RISC-V servers has been introduced by European cloud operator Scaleway, which claims this is a "firm commitment to technological independence" in a market where companies are increasingly vying for control over semiconductor production.
The University of California, Berkeley developed the free and open instruction set architecture known as RISC-V, which has the potential to completely transform the semiconductor industry. Even though RISC-V is a relatively new design, it is already producing high performance levels, which makes it a competitive substitute for more well-known architectures like ARM and x86.
Alibaba's T-Head TH1520 SoC, 16GB RAM, and 128GB eMMC storage are included in Scaleway's RISC-V servers. Priced at an affordable €15.99 a month (or €0.042 per hour), these Elastic Metal RV1 servers run on Debian, Ubuntu, or Alpine Linux and offer a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet network card as well as public IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
"We're delighted to be the first to offer RISC-V servers in the cloud, opening up new opportunities for our customers to meet growing demands for sovereignty, efficiency and sustainability. This innovation is a further step towards our vision of an independent and competitive European cloud", stated Damien Lucas, CEO at Scaleway.
These servers are energy-efficient, using between 0.96W and 1.9W per 1.8GHz core, and dense, with a 52U rack able to accommodate up to 672 EM-RV1s. The intricate design consists of hand-soldered parts, 3D-printed blades, and a laser-cut chassis.
Scaleway claims that these servers are the outcome of months of research and development in its Paris laboratories. However, the decision to employ eMMC storage may be unfortunate. While inexpensive, eMMC storage is slower and less dependable than other types of storage, such as SSDs. This could affect the server's performance and lifetime.
Scaleway introduced Arm servers in 2015, but eventually discontinued them in favour of AMD and Intel-based servers. With the introduction of these RISC-V servers, the company is clearly ready to try something new in the cloud server industry.
