The Linux Foundation Is Teaming Up With RISC-V To Promote The Open-Source CPU ISA

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Linux Foundation Is Teaming Up With RISC-V To Promote The Open-Source CPU ISA

The Linux Foundation and RISC-V Foundation are announcing a joint collaboration effort today to promote open-source development and adoption around this royalty-free CPU instruction set architecture...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RISC-V-Linux-Foundation-News

[milkylainen]

Umm. Isn't the ISA open source already? BSD License? At least for foundation members...
I think that's more than enough. What we need are feature rich & high quality open _implementations_ in a properly structured RTL project.
Every other push for "free" ISAs have failed because implementations were crap, slow, almost no features, embedded only, esoteric, nonexistent etc.

[flower]

Umm. Isn't the ISA open source already? BSD License? Atleast for foundation members...
I think that's more than enough. What we need are feature rich & high quality open _implementations_ in a properly structured RTL project.
Every other push for "free" ISA's has failed because implementations were crap, slow, almost no features, embedded only, esoteric, nonexistent etc.

you are right and that's the reason why i think this is a good idea.
i hope this helps the linux-dev-community to see risc-v as a first class citizen soon

[petteyg]

Second that. If you want an architecture to exist in a meaningful fashion, it needs workstation-class CPUs available. Get me that CPU, gcc, and a JRE, and I can use it as my desktop at work.

[c117152]

Proportionally to other architectures, RISC-V been unofficially promoted for quite a while. Patches to compilers... Modifications to the kernel vendoring... Even the pro-LLVM position. The foundation and the developers have been quite forthcoming.

[uid313]

I would like to see 96boards come out with some RISC-V system-on-a-chip.
Something like Raspberry Pi.

Maybe two models, one simpler barebones just for IoT, and one stronger with USB, Ethernet, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

[Raven3x7]

Yeah that would be cool. A cheap board to get the Arch into more hands

[ermo]

How cheap is a "cheap board" (the full fat version with e.g. 2-4GB RAM and a quad core) ? ~$100?

[uid313]

How cheap is a "cheap board" (the full fat version with e.g. 2-4GB RAM and a quad core) ? ~$100?

I would hope for around $35, like a Raspberry Pi.
Many ARM boards and ARM sticks are $50 or less.
HardKernel have some ODROID boards that are pretty good and cheap, around $49.

[Apokalypz]

Would be nice to tinker with, but performance wise it has to compete with arm to be practical for people not into FOSS and (FOSH?) In current real world uses. Which brings me to a question: Does a free ISA mean a free implementation? I would imagine all the optimized logic bits would be developed by those with the means to which would likely patent the implementation. So, assuming an implementation can be closed with an open ISA, it will probably be a case where the performant implementations aren't free, but the slow ones are.
Right?