[Arm-netbook] Have you checked out this Open Source RISC-V-based 32-bit μC?

[Paul Boddie]

On Tuesday 22. November 2016 11.33.27 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/news/codasip-baysand-bring-risc-v-proces
> sor-ip-market?news_id=88521
> 
> may be related, may be not - this is 65nm (around 700mhz top speed)
> and 40nm (around... 1.2ghz top speed if you're very lucky and have a
> decent design).

Well, it wasn't that! The Crowd Supply campaign for the microcontroller in 
question (not a system-on-a-chip) has just launched:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v

> "multivendor" program, basically you chuck a whole bunch of customer's
> designs onto a single wafer, absolutely nobody expects to get very
> many actual working ICs out of it, but the cost of a single wafer
> (bear in mind that 16 wafers have to be made simultaneously, total
> cost around $250k or that order, for 40nm) is subdivided amongst many
> many people.  end result: relatively cheap prototype grade ICs.

Actually, this came up in the discussion on the Hackaday article linked to 
from the campaign:

http://hackaday.com/2016/10/10/the-journey-toward-a-completely-open-
microcontroller/#comment-3227142

I think the term "multi-project wafer" is used, but it sounds like something 
rather similar.

Anyway, there is now another article about this campaign:

http://hackaday.com/2016/11/22/mrisc-v-the-first-open-source-risc-v-
microcontroller/

> the bit about conversion from FPGA... *shudder* that's truly dreadful,
> to not bother with the conversion from FPGA layout to a proper IC
> layout, just do like a "hard copy" of an FPGA, but given that the
> tools can cost $250k *PER WEEK* to rent (not buy) that's hardly
> surprising.
> 
> anyway all looks very interesting.

It certainly does. Clearly, the people doing it want to shake up the industry 
a bit by making the knowledge move around a bit more than it has been doing. 
Obviously, there are plenty of genuine economic obstacles around fabrication, 
as opposed to how much companies arbitrarily charge in licence fees for their 
tools, but somebody has to get the ball rolling.

Paul