2015-05-02 18:40 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton:
On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 5:24 PM, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montezelo@gmail.com wrote:
2015-05-02 17:00 Paul Boddie:
On Saturday 2. May 2015 17.07.57 Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
Speaking of openness/FSF-endorsability, and having into account that the current focus is to go ahead with what is already planned like the A20, with which I fully agree (so please don't take this as a demand, just as showing interest) -- would it be feasible in the near future to have OpenRISC or RISC-V (or RISC-V-based lowrisc, when ready)?
I imagine that it depends on things like availability of hardware versions of CPUs for these architectures. I recall that there was a board for OpenRISC that used an FPGA, and there was also a fundraising campaign for an ASIC version of, I think, the OR1200 which didn't succeed. So it may be the case that an FPGA solution is the only remotely near-future option, and that brings a lot of other issues.
Basically, the underlying question of what I was wondering (because I don't have any idea about hardware manufacturing), is if instead of asking companies to manufacture EOMA-68 A20 CPU cards, they could be asked to manufacture the same but with OpenRISC or RISC-V cores instead.
yeeess... but to do so requires those steps (1) through (6) i told you about. you can't just drop a processor onto a board and hope for the best, you actually have to custom-design the *entire* PCB - 300 components usually, thousands of individual wires (each one with rules).... it's not as straightforward as "yeah just put a processor down, it'll work".
Erm, I wonder if you are confusing me with another person, because I don't remember any conversation with you about PCBs or any steps, at least recently???
Anyway, I already suspected that it was not a matter of dropping a CPU and everything else falling into place into what it was already designed.
What I don't know --and that's why I was asking-- is if the reply to "Would it be somehow possible to have this in the near future?" approximates more to one which one of these:
a) "Impossible!"
b) "Perhaps could do, but not interested for the time being because I don't know if they will sell"
c) "Yeah, I had already planned to look into this in early summer, and it will take 6-15 months after that --if funding comes-- to get the samples".
lowrisc themselves want to go ahead with a SoC based on RISC-V, with additional CPU features.
*sigh*. academics. absolutely no clue about the real world. the cost of getting the chip made is by far and above the largest part of the exercise of getting a chip to market. so they're going to make something which has no graphics, no video acceleration - nothing. why would *anyone* want to buy such a chip??? madness...
anyway, good luck to them - they have a lot to learn.
Apart from being academics, the founders of the project are co-founders of RaspberryPi, and they have as advisors "bunnie" of Novena laptop fame --among others-- and Google's Project Ara, so I think that it's not a typical academic project.
Cheers. -- Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montezelo@gmail.com