[Arm-netbook] Linux now boots on 22nm RISC-V Shakti CPU

[Wean Irdeh]

On Tuesday, July 31, 2018, Bill Kontos <vkontogpls at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've read somewhere that this requires specifically compiled binaries
> to work because it lacks some instructions. Is that correct? If so
> will this limitation carry forward to other designs from the team?
>
>
From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17643166
Annoyingly this chip lacks the Compressed (RVC) extension, making it
incompatible with all existing Linux distros. These will either have to be
recompiled without any Compressed instructions (which increases I-cache
pressure on other CPUs that do support it), or we'll need to ship two
versions of everything. From discussions I believe they've been recompiling
Fedora & Debian from sources without RVC.

From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17643762
The shakti effort was started in 2014. As a member of the group I can say
that, then RVC was only seen at as optional extension. We got the tapeout
opportunity an year ago. Later the riscv community has taken the decision
to make RVC extension mandatory for distros without involving most of its
committee members. Had we been told earlier would have given the support.

On Tuesday, July 31, 2018, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net>
wrote:

> Oh and me, skating around the campus, feeding the monkeys, farting
> and using um colourful language shall we say, and writing python that spits
> out BSV like it was born to Rock.
>
>
> L.
>
>
lol. Go back to work, Luke!