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MIPS Processor ISA To Be Open-Sourced In 2019

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  • #11
    Originally posted by AndyChow View Post

    SPARC T1 and T2 has been open since 2007, but to my knowledge, no one has ever fabbed one. Damn shame, because the T2 had 8 cores, 16 pipelines with 64 threads. Today not "THAT" impressive, but in 2007 it was good.

    Having an open ISA doesn't mean that much. Even an open RTL schematic. You still need someone to fab the thing.
    Probably because T1 And T2 sucked at real workloads except for corner case database useage and web serving (they largely sucked there also). T3 fixed alot of this but wasn't open. You could run OpenSparc on a high end FPGA back in the day. Also there is Leon Sparc which is open source and great for extreme reliablity use (such as flight control systems, rad hardened versions from Atmel also, they even have one we a rad hard embedded FPGA integrated with the CPU). temlib is also another 32bit implementation of sun4m including CPU that runs on spartan6 and partially on Cyclone V. The MicroSparcII was written in VHDL and that source code is floating around online for the curious (testbenches and all).

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    • #12
      Originally posted by onicsis View Post
      To late. POWER it's already hier. Maybe MIPS it's more suited for embedded systems.
      There is already POWER for high performance and RISC-V for embedded and low consumption devices. I think MIPS is poised to join OpenSPARC, OpenRISC and others in the also-ran category. Besides, I always felt that the MIPS ISA with its branch delay slots kind of sucks.

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      • #13
        This is progress from IBM forcing Intel to license the x86 ISA to AMD/VIA. ARM was freely license-able by anyone who had the cash. Now we have open ISAs and a few open cores, but like others have said, you still need someone to fab the chip or a very expensive FPGA to run it on. Interesting days* ahead for competing ISAs, however entrenched they may be.
        Last edited by audir8; 17 December 2018, 08:36 PM.

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        • #14
          Originally posted by uid313 View Post
          Great!

          About time!
          I wish this happened much sooner.

          It feels like it is a desperate move out of fear to fade into irrelevance with the arrival of RISC-V which is gaining momentum. I wish they had done this long ago out of own free will instead.
          Agreed.
          If they did it 10 years earlier they would get a much better position than they are today.
          Just like Linux won't exist if Minix was licensed in BSD.

          Nowadays even my router is running on Cortex

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          • #15
            Originally posted by zxy_thf View Post
            Just like Linux won't exist if Minix was licensed in BSD.
            Linux exists because Minix was too limited to be a useful OS. Linus wanted a 32-bit, protected mode, multitasking OS with memory protection; there was Minix which didn't do much, there was OS/2 which didn't do much either, and there were the various Unices that were outlandishly expensive and didn't run well (or at all) on common hardware.

            Minix could have been licensed under BSD or GPL or whatever, that wouldn't change a thing. It was designed to be simple and easy to understand for students, not to be a full-featured OS for real applications, which is what Linux was started for.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by jacob View Post

              Linux exists because Minix was too limited to be a useful OS. Linus wanted a 32-bit, protected mode, multitasking OS with memory protection; there was Minix which didn't do much, there was OS/2 which didn't do much either, and there were the various Unices that were outlandishly expensive and didn't run well (or at all) on common hardware.
              Minix would have been forked and Linux as we know it now wouldn't have existed. That Minix fork would have the features we now see in Linux. That's my guess. Although Linus had another reason: he liked monolithic kernel better.

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              • #17
                Originally posted by Tomin View Post

                Minix would have been forked and Linux as we know it now wouldn't have existed. That Minix fork would have the features we now see in Linux. That's my guess. Although Linus had another reason: he liked monolithic kernel better.
                Linux *is* a fork of Minix, or at least was in its early days. What you describe is exactly how it went. Yes, Linus prefers monolithic/hybrid kernels to microkernels so that was one of the first major changes he implemented.

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                • #18
                  Well, I'd like to see development board with MIPS based Emotion Engine, but at more decent clock speed. Doubt that would be openned any time soon though.

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                  • #19
                    MIPS64 running running great in my Octanes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU_RV8uoTIo and Origin 200: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVNT6FNPc7o

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by jacob View Post
                      Linux *is* a fork of Minix, or at least was in its early days. What you describe is exactly how it went. Yes, Linus prefers monolithic/hybrid kernels to microkernels so that was one of the first major changes he implemented.
                      Linux is not a fork of Minix. BSD license does not allow you to change the license of your product.

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