We’re pleased to re-share this insightful article by Jonah McLeod, which dives into our Founder and CEO, Yuning Liang’s journey and his vision for open, modular RISC-V PCs.
Key Highlights
- From software veteran to hardware entrepreneur, Yuning’s path includes stints at Xerox, Nokia, Huawei, and Samsung—and ultimately led him to champion RISC-V hardware during the COVID lockdowns.
- His first product, the ROMA laptop, was built in limited quantity—not a commercial success, but a powerful proof of concept: hardware people could touch, hack, and learn from.
- The partnership with Framework emerged after Yuning cold-pitched them on Twitter: “You build the shell; I’ll build the motherboard.” The collaboration allowed DeepComputing to focus on RISC-V boards while leveraging Framework’s modular casing and community.
- A central struggle is software support—especially getting full Chromium builds, upstreaming patches, and maintaining performance for modern workloads. Without software parity, hardware breakthroughs alone won’t move the needle.
- Yuning sees the long game: enabling a scalable RISC-V software ecosystem, leveraging “Lego-style” modular hardware, and cultivating community-driven improvements as the path to mainstream viability.
We hope you enjoy reading Jonah’s full piece as much as we did. It captures not just the technical ambitions, but the spirit of persistence and openness at the heart of what we’re building.
Read the original article on SemiWiki.
