[libre-riscv-dev] PowerISA, NLNet grants

[Staf Verhaegen]

All,

First as announced in other mail I am funded by NLNet to do a first
0.18um test tape-out. In the end I will tape out what is decided here
on the list what will be designed and layouted.

That said, I join the thought that going for the PowerISA would just
reduce the reach of LibreSOC a lot and I don't see it getting the
wanted traction in that way. Although Risc-V has currently some/lot's
of vibe, it itself is not decided yet if it will get real traction
compared to ARM. I do think there is some middle way though that I will
explain below.

whygee at f-cpu.org schreef op za 18-01-2020 om 21:05 [+0100]:
> 
> 
> In the end, the goals are to make a privacy/safe processor
> that could be widely adopted, IIRC (otherwise it wouldn't make sense).
> Maybe we can just fork RV after all, regardless of the opinions
> of the others, in order to do the graphics stuff,
> and if it works well enough, others will merge/adapt the work
> with fewer efforts than if we had to support POWER.
> Forking is frowned upon by the Foundation but can they really
> prevent/forbid/avoid it ? They manage the ISA but they say it's "open".

AFAICS this is all about the Risc-V trademark where the bylaws are not
fit for community driven projects. It only consider lone hobbyist or
corporates; not a libre development community.
Being 'just' a trademark issue I do think it is possible keep on
developing libreSOC as you plan to do but just don't call it Risc-V
(yet). As the Risc-V foundation makes sure the ABI is free of any known
patents they can't forbid you to have a design which is compatible with
it, they can only forbid you to use the Risc-V name.
In parallel one can do lobbying to get the Risc-V foundation bylaws
more fit for libre community driven development projects. And with
lobbying I mean talking off-line with people who are part of the Risc-V 
foundation. I don't think you will achieve this with fighting a war on
a maillist. I have also connection there and will do some talking when
I meet these people.
Also the final high volume tape-out could also be done by an entity
that than conforms with the trademark rules so the chip can be marketed
as Risc-V.

This is similar to Linux, that also happened to be (mostly) API
compatible with UNIX but was not called UNIX because of the trademark.

greets,
Staf.