[Arm-netbook] The future of EOMA-68

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

2015-05-02 18:40 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton:
>On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 5:24 PM, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo
><manuel.montezelo at 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.

http://www.lowrisc.org/about/


Cheers.
--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>