On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 7:26 PM, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montezelo@gmail.com wrote:
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???
manufacture. steps prior to that: design the PCB. source the components. guarantee supply. steps (1) through (6) which i outlined earlier in this thread, not six hours previously, today.
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".
none of those. the answer remains as i said: steps (1) through (6) have to be satisfied, in addition to there being sufficient end-user interest to justify the investment of time and money.
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.
none of those people have _actually_ designed a processor, nor have they the commercial experience in designing a processor to be targetted at a specific market, nor have they *actually* been through the process of sourcing and licensing (or designing) the hard macros and associated test vectors, nor have they been through the costings and project management aspects associated with bringing a processor to market.
in other words, each and every one of the people you mentioned has absolutely zero experience in processor design and manufacturing.
l.