Milk-V, a renowned hardware firm in the space of RISC-V products, has unveiled its newest "AI PC" focused mini-ITX motherboard, coming in support of AMD's flagship Radeon GPUs such as the RX 7900 XTX.
Milk-V's Megrez Motherboard Is Being Pitched As An "AI PC" Product, Comes With A Chip that features Dedicated AI NPU Onboard & Support For Up To AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU
It's not every day that RISC-V-based products drop into the markets, especially when they're mini-ITX motherboards. There haven't been many instances where manufacturers have integrated the architecture into a compact design, given the lack of interest from both the consumer and the clientele segment.
However, with the debut of the AI hype, RISC-V solutions have specifically seen massive attention, given their scalability and perf/$ figures and Milk-V's newest "Megrez" motherboard aims at catalyzing RISC-V adoption among the average consumer.
Starting with the specifications, the Milk-V Megrez reportedly features the Eswin EIC7700X SoC onboard, which is a 64-bit RISC-V high-performance CPU with a 4x SIFIVE P550 core configuration and a frequency up to 1.6 GHz. What makes the EIC7700X distinctive is how the manufacturer has been able to integrate a dedicated NPU onboard, which provides up to 19.95 TOPS INT8 performance, making it the first instance where we have seen a dedicated AI engine in a RISC-V-based processor.
Milk-V Megrez running AMD 7900XTX
Quad core SiFive P550, 19.95TOPS NPU#riscv #RISCVSummit pic.twitter.com/xSuTLjcIqO
— Milk-V (@MilkV_Official) October 24, 2024
What makes the Milk-V Megrez interesting apart from the SoC onboard is its ability to be used with a consumer GPU, such as AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which opens new doorways when it comes to cross-compatibility between the architectures,
In this case, RISC-V and RDNA. Milk-V's official X account has shared a running demo of using the Radeon RX 7900 XTX mounted on the Megrez motherboard; hence, this is surely a great breakthrough for the RISC-V segment and its potential adoption in the consumer markets, although this is still far away.
Diving a bit into other specifications of the Milk-V Megrez, the motherboard offers support for a single LPDDR5-6400 memory module and comes with a 1x SATA SSD slot and a 1x microSD card slot. Hence, it is not too high-end when it comes to memory and storage options.
So overall, the Milk-V Megrez is one step closer to making RISC-V mainstream in the consumer markets, yet the destination is too far away, given that not many industry players are looking to experiment with RISC-V, and existing solutions, such as those from Tenstorrent, haven't seen much of a spotlight relative to other counterpart architectures.
Milk-V hasn't disclosed the pricing and release date of their Megrez "AI PC" motherboard, so it's likely that the product is in its testing phases.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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