Open-Source CPU Architecture Pulled Into Linux 3.1 Kernel

The latest feature to be pulled into the Linux 3.1 kernel is support for OpenRISC, an open-source CPU architecture.

OpenRISC is the project from the OpenCores community that is designed to create an open-source RISC CPU with the hardware design, models, and firmware being released under the GPL/LGPL. The OR1200 implementation is able to run on FPGAs from a number of different hardware vendors and is evidently already being used within the industry.

While the OpenRISC project has been around for years, this is the first time that the necessary support for this open-source CPU architecture is landing in the mainline kernel tree. OpenCores developers have been tracking the upstream Linux kernel since 2.6.35, but now they've come to decide that they're ready to go for the gold in the Linux 3.1 kernel.

Pulling in OpenRISC architecture support adds just under 11,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds pushed it in on Sunday afternoon.

For those interested in more information on the OpenRISC Linux project, see the pull request, OpenRISC.net, or OpenCores.org.