The EOMA68 Libre Computer Developer Wants To Tackle A Quad-Core RISC-V Libre SoC Design

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The EOMA68 Libre Computer Developer Wants To Tackle A Quad-Core RISC-V Libre SoC Design

Stemming from the recent proposal about a libre GPU using a RISC-V chip running a Rust-based software renderer like a software-based Vulkan implementation, the developer appears to be ready to take on designing a quad-core RISC-V libre SoC that he believes can be competitive for mobile devices...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Quad-Core-Libre-SoC-Proposal

[VinceLe]

As currently having burnt ~100€ by the EOAM68 project, I won't be holding my breath on this one...

[ldesnogu]

I would hope more people realized being free has a price :-)

Building a successful CPU team requires a lot of money no matter how free/gratis is the ISA.

Also royalties due to CPU licenses on lower end ARM based SoC is less than $1.

Good luck to that guy but he seems to be more on a religious war than anything else.

[kpedersen]

I would hope more people realized being free has a price :-)

If we all got together and refused to buy stuff unless the hardware was truely open, proprietary hardware would be almost completely eliminated in, what. Shall we say 5 years?

Freedom is and will always be free.. Unfortunately people are also free to be incorrect and keep buying proprietary stuff or damaging the climate or killing wildlife, etc...

[Min1123]

I also pledged to the EOMA68 project, but I don't really want an AllWinner A20 chip, I want something that is libre. So my hope has always been that EOMA68 is a stepping-off point to get from respects your freedom (the Libre-Tea one) to actual libre, which would be his interest in RISC-V SoCs.

What's pretty important here is also that he calls out the Compressed extension, which is something that has already caused som fragmentation in the RISC-V world, as Shakti began prior to compressed extensions being part of the spec, possibly meaning that this proposed chip would be based on a more current spec, not on Shakti.

He also had an intreresting proposal for using SPI RAM instead of DDRx RAM to save on a large number of pins for the CPU package.

[ldesnogu]

If we all got together and refused to buy stuff unless the hardware was truely open, proprietary hardware would be almost completely eliminated in, what. Shall we say 5 years?

Freedom is and will always be free.. Unfortunately people are also free to be incorrect and keep buying proprietary stuff or damaging the climate or killing wildlife, etc...

What you propose would indeed be very good for wildlife as you'd stop buying almost any form of hardware, be it computers or anything else that's being manufactured.

Next step is to open up design process and fabs. Let's see how this turns up as it needs billions of dollars of investment.

[milkylainen]

Wait, what now?
This project, having trouble shipping a PCB made of available components with thousands of templates to duplicate solutions from wants to build a quad-core RISC-V with GPU and a fully featured SoC ecosystem?
Dude. Assembling a PCB with ready made SoCs from manufacturer templates is not even in the same division as building a full ASIC SoC, testing, qualifying, porting software etc.

This religious war target seems to be way off based on skill-set.

[Weasel]

Wait, what now?
This project, having trouble shipping a PCB made of available components with thousands of templates to duplicate solutions from wants to build a quad-core RISC-V with GPU and a fully featured SoC ecosystem?
Dude. Assembling a PCB with ready made SoCs from manufacturer templates is not even in the same division as building a full ASIC SoC, testing, qualifying, porting software etc.

This religious war target seems to be way off based on skill-set.

What else did you expect from someone who promotes Rust?

Rusted brain.

[milkylainen]

If we all got together and refused to buy stuff unless the hardware was truely open, proprietary hardware would be almost completely eliminated in, what. Shall we say 5 years?

Freedom is and will always be free.. Unfortunately people are also free to be incorrect and keep buying proprietary stuff or damaging the climate or killing wildlife, etc...

With regards to ASIC hardware, it has almost always been a pipe dream.
Hardware in contrast to software actually requires some serious investments.
It is ridiculously tough to build a competing SoC with regards to power envelope, scalability, performance etc.
You need not only brilliant ASIC engineers but shitloads of qualification gear and proprietary software to even begin to think ASIC.

How about even the basic of stuff? Like a RTL compiler worth a damn not costing millions of dollars?
If you're going to have communication you need even more stuff for verification of your transceivers to send data on.
RF-verification, RF-design, Power-planning, clock-trees, floor-planning.. Bla, bla bla. I could go on.

But yeah. I'll hack up a fully featured Quad-core SoC in my basement any day now...

[Weasel]

With regards to ASIC hardware, it has almost always been a pipe dream.
Hardware in contrast to software actually requires some serious investments.

...which is especially hard for someone who's been babysit in software "development" by "modern languages" and whose coding background is "I'm leet at javascript" to understand that yes, some jobs actually require a lot of skill and careful planning.

Like most "web developers" these days.