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xdxdxon VexRiscv is a quadcore, Linux-capable RISC-V softcore for FPGA

I think the main barrier to a cheap RISC-V board like you describe is a real Android port. By "real" I mean it needs working ART and V8 compiler ports so apps and web pages don't run at 10% of the speed of low-end ARM chips.

Once that exists, I think we'll see companies develop RISC-V chips cheap enough for low-end smartphones and other IoT devices. Those are the chips that are cheap enough to put in a <$100 board.

xdxdxon The death of corporate research labs

Because the companies that HN likes to sarcastically call "ad companies" actually ship many sophisticated products to their customers (both users and advertisers)? Products with features and infrastructure enabled by research done in their research labs?

They could stop working on their products but they wouldn't last long. The consumer tech world changes rapidly and is fiercely competitive.

xdxdxon Oculus: Hand Tracking Updates

Also referenced in this paper (section 5): https://research.fb.com/publications/machine-learning-at-fac...

xdxdxon The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

There are some other potential reasons: - Simpler PCB routing (= fewer layers = cheaper board) only using lanes from the CPU closer to the slots - Slots still work when 2nd CPU is not installed without extra chips - Board is already not designed around heavy I/O use cases given lack of PCIe 4.0 support

This definitely feels like a board that's mostly intended for compute-intensive workloads that do not need much PCIe bandwidth.

xdxdxon Mini-Mainframe at Home: A 6-CPU Server from 1997

I suppose they could take out just the CPUs for the gold and leave the rest to hold up the tables.

xdxdxon NY launches live dashboard of each regions progress hitting 7 reopening criteria

One major factor is just how early California ordered residents to shelter-in-place (or "lockdown"). Several San Francisco Bay Area counties issued an order on March 17. Governor Newsom then issued a statewide order on March 19. On that day, California had 1,006 cases. Compare this to New York's 7,102 cases on March 20 when its residents were ordered to shelter-in-place, or Italy's 9,172 cases on March 9 when its national lockdown was instituted. So New York and Italy were already quite behind to start with.

California also has a few other things going for it, for example: CA's urban areas are not as dense as somewhere like NYC. Compared to Italy, the population is relatively young. Many people have professional jobs that can be done remotely (companies like Google and Facebook sent their employees home even before March 12). Public transit is very bad in CA, so almost everyone drives their own car.