Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

Re:Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them? by cleemens on Monday December 06, 2021 @11:50AM (#29462128)

"As should be obvious by now, there is no situation where these foundry processes and tools are open source."

This is already false. The famous OpenPDK by Skywater (sponsored by Google) is proving this article wrong from the beginning. (https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk)

Yes, thats a rather old technology node, but you can now synthesize your free RISC-V design with a free Toolchain (openROAD) onto this open PDK.

Amazing times!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them? by zozbot234 on Monday December 06, 2021 @01:40PM (#29463784)

That process node is not just "rather old", it is literally 20 years old. Sure, it's nice that these old processes are being opened up, but for anything finer you're still going to run into the patent concerns that the article talks about.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them? by makapuf on Monday December 06, 2021 @06:45PM (#29467332)

sure, but having the ability to have an open 1GHz Athlon XP (with increases in IPC allowed by modern architectures) would be nothing to sneeze at. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/130_nm_process

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