[libre-riscv-dev] PowerISA, NLNet grants

Staf Verhaegen staf at fibraservi.eu
Sat Jan 18 20:54:03 GMT 2020


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.



More information about the libre-riscv-dev mailing list