[libre-riscv-dev] Google Funding TSMC Tapeout

[Staf Verhaegen]

Immanuel, Yehowshua U schreef op do 05-03-2020 om 13:17 [+0000]:
> Hello Staf,

Hello Immanuel, rearranged the mail a little.

> 	Glad to have you as part of LibreSociety. I’m Yehowshua Immanuel. I’m looking at different avenues to incorporate LibreSOC so we can be directly investable from a VC standpoint and have been corresponding closely Luke. As I've mentioned before, we have a couple of interested VCs.

I've seen he goal of having a 28nm libre-SOC and I am kind of skeptical. I'm coming from the industry and doing something in these smaller nodes is very capital intensive. Compared to that an open source phone (like the librem 5) seems to be a walk in the park.
But I also always say that I like to be proven wrong...

> 	Lastly, can you add your page here?: 
> https://libre-riscv.org/about_us/
> 
> 
> It's important that the hard work of contributors in the LibreSociety is visible to parties that are interested in funding us.
> 
> Again, glad to have you on the team,
> 	Yehowshua

I don't consider myself part of LibreSociety. I am independently developing open source ASIC manufacturing services. Currently this overlaps with the development goal of libre-soc and my industry experience can help cutting corners and keep the right focus during development.
From the ethical side I am more on the open source side of things than on the free software side of things (prefer to have further discussion on this off-list).

> 	I recently(just now) became aware that you have funding from Google to do a tapeout? How does this work? From Google’s standpoint, what benefit does LibreSOC offer them? Are they investing more in the concept of generic design cells, or in the idea of LibreSOC itself?

The current work is funded by NLNet. I won't be funded by Google to do a tape-out.
I am in contact with Tim "Mithro" Ansel from Google who is working on open source PDK and will plans to provided shuttles for open source design using that technology. I have NDA with him/Google but more information should be given by him next week @ open hardware summit: https://2020.oshwa.org/schedule/

greets,
Staf.