Project Aims To Build a Fully Open SoC and Dev Board 47
DeviceGuru (1136715) writes "A non-profit company is developing an open source 64-bit system-on-chip that will enable fully open hardware, 'from the CPU core to the development board.' The 'lowRISC' SoC is the brainchild of a team of hardware and software hackers from the University of Cambridge, with the stated goal of implementing a 'fully open computing eco-system, including the instruction set architecture (ISA), processor silicon, and development boards.' The lowRISC's design is based on a new 64-bit RISC-V ISA, developed at UC Berkeley. The RISC-V core design has now advanced enough for the lowRISC project to begin designing an SoC around it. Prototype silicon of a 'RISC-V Rocket' core itself has already been benchmarked at UC Berkeley, with results results (on GitHub) suggesting that in comparison to a 32-bit ARM Cortex-A5 core, the RISC-V core is faster, smaller, and uses less power. And on top of that it's open source. Oh, and there's a nifty JavaScript-based RISC-V simulator that runs in your browser."
expecting performance from IE? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you expecting high performance from Microsoft IE, in their JScript engine?
One of the reasons Chrome EXISTS is to provide a high performance platform for Google Docs, Gmail and similar large JavaScript applications. These are the applications that intend to replace Microsoft' s cash cow, Office. It would be better for MS to stop shipping IE at all than for them to provide an excellent platform in which to run Google Docs.
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Yes it does, but it needs three minutes to boot to shell, at least in firefox.
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which probably says more about a JS-based emulator in a browser than the platform itself.
No qemu support yet?
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I just ran Linux on "it", inside Chrome, which is running in a Linux VM on my MacBook Pro.
Yeah. That's not good somehow.
Based on the reported IPS of the RISC-V CPU emulator, it takes 1839 actual hardware instructions to cycle the RISC-V once.
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Yeah. That's not good somehow.
Based on the reported IPS of the RISC-V CPU emulator, it takes 1839 actual hardware instructions to cycle the RISC-V once.
So? The speed of an emulator isn't a reflection on the quality of a CPU. A cycle accurate simulator is designed to function exactly like the real thing in simulated time, not real time. It doesn't reflect either way on the actual silicon.
A better (but still poor) proxy for the performance of a CPU design on silicon is it's elaboration in an FPGA. The generator should be out real soon (I am not affiliated with the project, but it says on the github), then you can test it out on your FPGA board.
Unfortunately
$60k mask set for 40nm (Score:1)
$60k for 40nm? Where???? I will place my order tomorrow.
It is about $60K for (the very old and commodity) 180nm process, but there are other costs as well... still this is 'affordable'. 40nm is lots of $$$ for masks. Mosis at about $60k for a few 'TinyChip' (if they still call it at) parts in 40nm sounds about right though...
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As a practical matter, a mask set at 40nm costs around $60k
Maybe one mask costs $60k, but a mask set? I think you left off a zero.
Where are those chips baked? (Score:2)
But then I wondered -- what actually was the motivation for this all out Open Source SoC?
Re:Where are those chips baked? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article they are using TSMC [tsmc.com], which is one of the largest silicon foundries (ASIC manufacturing) in the world.
As for the all out open-source, they also make clear on the project page that hardware patents on the chipset instruction is supposedly strangling innovation for processors. I'm not sure I buy that, ARM, Intel and IBM have moved their architectures along pretty well. Even poor little MIPS has made strides despite losing market share.
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Cross-licensing? The strangling is probably that the barrier of entry for any new player is incredibly high, which sucks big time. It's like this in all sufficiently large tech markets it seems. The theory is that the one who makes the product people want wins. In practice, the one who kills the competition (using patents for example) wins.
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As the blog in EE Times ("The Case for Free, Open Instruction Sets") argues, an ARM license costs $1M to $10M and takes 6 to 24 months to negotiate and then they take a small royalty per chip.
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1323406
The proprietary instruction sets (ARM, IBM, Intel) have indeed evolved; that is not the problem. The problem is that you're not allowed to share implementations of the proprietary instruction sets with others. Thus, the lowRISC project is using a design from UC Berkeley f
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Well you can fix all the problems existing in current SoCs. For example you could build an architecture which enables you to have multiple SoC boot up from the same image, just like the PC does. You could have basic hardware support without binary blobs.
In essence you could create a new portable platform where you could, for example, swap out the operating system on your mobile phone just by putting another OS onto your SD-card. That way even if your vendor doesn't support your device anymore, you can still
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But then I wondered -- what actually was the motivation for this all out Open Source SoC?
There have been a few projects like this posted to Slashdot over the years. For some people, it's like climbing Mount Everest -- "because it's there". Some people want to extend the open hardware community down into chip design, possibly encouraging new start-up companies. (lowRISC seems to be in this category.) And some people think the semiconductor industry is a stagnant patent-choked wasteland in need of a Linux-style revolution. (These people are idiots, and do not know anything about hardware manufact
Stallman (Score:3, Funny)
Finally, he can upgrade his computer...
Big names involved- RISC creator, rPi leaders (Score:4, Insightful)
For those who didn't read TFS, the project is led by people with a track record of getting things done. One team member helped design, and named, the RISC architecture. Others are leaders of the Raspberry Pi project. That suggests these people know how to do this sort of thing successfully.
Raspberry Pi was putting a chip on a board (Score:2)
Well, securing supply of an already existing chip at a good price and putting it on a board.
That doesn't relate to designing an entire SoC and getting it fabbed.
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Well, securing supply of an already existing chip at a good price and putting it on a board.
That doesn't relate to designing an entire SoC and getting it fabbed.
You mean securing supply of an existing chip, at a good price point, building exactly what people were asking, delivering it at the price people wanted, marketting it well to the right customers, building up the correct user base, and all in all selling 2.5million units.
You can try and downplay their successes anyway you want, but the reality is that there are MANY SoC devices out there which are better than the RPi but none of them managed to do what the team did with that device.
If you want someone with a
Forth? (Score:2)
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If there isn't after the project stabilizes, and you cant port it yourself, then you shouldn't be asking about FORTH in the first place.
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For a clean sheet CPU design, ARM's instruction set is a horrible choice. It's carrying the bloat of 4 different architecture widths (24, 32, 16 and 64 in that order).
I'm all in favour of people designing their own CPUs. It's not that hard and good ideas come from it.
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Get a grip.
You lost interest in this project because the summary of the slashdot post decribed them as "hackers"?
FYI, a "hacker" is someone who finds uses for a technological item that were not intended/anticipated by the original inventor of that item. Not sure that really applies here, but it doesn't matter, because the wording chosen for a slashdot post summary should have zero impact on weather or not a project is interest-worthy.
Re:Hackers? (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, you youngins...its original meaning was anyone who whacked away at software or hardware, it had nothing to do with finding unintended uses or any other borderline technical behavior. What happened was Hollywood and the media picked up the term to apply to people for whom they had no name. Those people were originally called crackers. But Hollywood and the media couldn't tell the phonetic different between the two terms, hacker was easier to pronounce, and had few letters. Then some babies were born and now use the term in its present meaning.
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Because we should all bow down to simplification and opinions of common people. Really? Go f*** yourself and then jump of a cliff.
Myself and other sane people will keep calling a computer a computer and not a "CPU".
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You lost interest in this project because the summary of the slashdot post decribed them as "hackers"?
Pretty much.
Slashdot Editors:
"mm, what to call people who design and manufacture SoC chips. Nope, cant think of anything, lets just call them hackers because we can use it in anything, whilst looking cool!"
Everyone else:
"SoC designers and engineers"
I'am with everyone else.
Real comparisons? (Score:2)
Real comparisons? (Score:1)
I don't see that they have a working chip yet.
Yes, it's real silicon. There are 8 silicon implementations so far (from Berkeley at least, not from LowRISC). - Berkeley RISC-V user.
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