Linux Now Has Its First Open Source RISC-V Processor

Re:Linux Now Has Its First Open Source RISC-V Processor by tyingq on Saturday October 07, 2017 @11:00AM (#15424007)

Would be nice if there was a summary page describing what "open source processor" means in this context.

I understand the ISA is open source, but SiFive does appear to be selling their IP.

https://dev.sifive.com/coreplex-risc-v-ip/buy/

Royalty-free seems like a better term to describe what they are offering than "open source".

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Re:Linux Now Has Its First Open Source RISC-V Processor by gioele on Saturday October 07, 2017 @12:15PM (#15424329)

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15400217

> I understand the ISA is open source, but SiFive does appear to be selling their IP. > > https://dev.sifive.com/coreplex-risc-v-ip/buy/

IIUC, SiFive is selling the ready-made "hard IP" [1], that means a compiled netlist that has been laid out at a slightly-abstract-but-almost-mask level.

All this is manual work done on top of a netlist generated using the open-source Rocket chip generator [2,3] (SiFive people contribute to the upstream repository).

Let's make a Wordpress analogy: SiFive is a big contributor to Wordpress and does most of the work upstream. At the same time they sell you preconfigured server images for your blog with Wordpress, nginx, varnish and postfix almost ready to go (few settings like IP, hostname and WP theme are still missing).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_intellectual_pro...

[2] https://bar.eecs.berkeley.edu/projects/2014-rocket_chip.html

[3] https://github.com/freechipsproject/rocket-chip

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Re:Linux Now Has Its First Open Source RISC-V Processor by kobeya on Saturday October 07, 2017 @12:25PM (#15424397)

Also they resell IP that is not theirs to give away, sadly. They are working on putting this chip in workstation class hardware, and when they do it will support PCIe, DDR4, USB3, etc. using off the shelf solutions they have licensed and integrated.

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Re:Linux Now Has Its First Open Source RISC-V Processor by jononor on Sunday October 08, 2017 @06:44AM (#15427742)

I hope that over time they, or partners, or others, will develop open source alternatives to these IP blocks. So that we can gradually increase the level of openness

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Re:Linux Now Has Its First Open Source RISC-V Processor by Recurecur on Sunday October 08, 2017 @08:33AM (#15427960)

Will this all be on a SOC? Are these plans public?

It'd be great to get some single board computers on the market based on this architecture...

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Re:Linux Now Has Its First Open Source RISC-V Processor by kobeya on Monday October 09, 2017 @12:46AM (#15431642)

https://www.sifive.com/products/freedom/

Scroll down to "Freedom Unleashed".

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Re:Linux Now Has Its First Open Source RISC-V Processor by C0DEHERO on Saturday October 07, 2017 @03:35PM (#15425306)

Seems like a good start though. LowRISC(http://www.lowrisc.org/) is working on completely open processors, so if the adoption of RISC through SiFives' processors can improve support for RISC-V, the path towards open processor hardware should be a lot easier.

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Re:Linux Now Has Its First Open Source RISC-V Processor by leowoo91 on Saturday October 07, 2017 @11:04AM (#15424025)

Indeed, tl;dr SiFive sells cpu hardware design IP starting from 275k.

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