[Arm-netbook] sifive sells a riscv cpu mainboard

[Jonathan Neuschäfer]

On Mon, Feb 05, 2018 at 03:05:03PM -0500, ronwirring at Safe-mail.net wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: Jonathan Neuschäfer<j.neuschaefer at gmx.net>
> Apparently from: arm-netbook-bounces at lists.phcomp.co.uk
> To: Eco-Conscious Computing <arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] sifive sells a riscv cpu mainboard
> Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2018 18:49:36 +0100
> 
> > On Mon, Feb 05, 2018 at 12:39:57PM -0500, ronwirring at Safe-mail.net wrote:
> > > Sifive has a mainboard for sale with a running riscv cpu. Many
> > > of the devices on the mainboard require non libre software.
> > > 
> > > https://youtu.be/LAA1B5QNbO8?t=1507
> > 
> > What do you mean exactly?
> 
> I do not know exactly what I mean. Go to 31.20 in the video
> to hear what sifive means.

"As I told you, the Freedom Unleashed 540 chip is based on the Freedom
platform, but unfortunately, there are things that we can't open-source,
for example the IPs that we got from the third-parties, such as the
standard cells, the pads, the PLLs, the OTPs, the mask ROMs, the DDR
controller PHY, the gigabit MAC."

This is all hardware, not software.

> Can you tell if the mainboard is free software foundation
> compliant?

As far as I understand, yes.

> If that is the case, I understood the video wrongly. I got
> the impression the mainboard requires non libre software
> to run. Software which makes the mainboard not free
> software foundation compliant.
> 
> At 43.39 in the video they say, they are using an
> external non libre software graphics card. If we got
> all of the source code for one of the mali gpu's,
> could the aforementioned gpu then be used on
> a riscv mainboard?

This was a regular desktop graphics card, connected over PCIe.

> Or in general, can you place a mali gpu on a riscv mainboard?

No, MALI is (AFAIK) not available as a separate chip, so you can't put
it on a board if the SoC doesn't already have it.

And since it's ARM MALI, I don't think ARM will license it for use in
RISC-V SoCs…


Jonathan Neuschäfer