4 ms·

An Open Source Release of the Freedom U540-C000's Bootloader

59 points by nickik 8y ago

the-dude 8y ago
Title deserves mention of RISC-V board.
- nickik 8y ago
  I did when I submitted it but its not there anymore. Edit: To any admin I think it was necessary context to understand the title and I think it should be added back.
nickik 8y ago
Notice that this is really a cool development about something that SiFive was criticized for. It was picked up for example here: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RISC-V-Not-All-Open-Yet https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RISC-V-N... > All this said, note that the HiFive is no more open, today, than your average ARM SOC; and it is much less open than, e.g., Power. I realize there was a lot of hope in the early days that RISC-V implied "openness" but as we can see that is not so. There's blobs in HiFive. > Open instruction sets do not necessarily result in open implementations. An open implementation of RISC-V will require a commitment on the part of a company to opening it up at all levels, not just the instruction set. > by Ron Minnich (Google, Coreboot) Its fantastic to see that they are really pushing in that direct. Specially that they try to go as deep as possible form there. Establish a new standard people strive for, open hardware and firmware. There are many blobs left but having a platform that starts out pretty open will allow lots more development on the missing pieces. Edit: I think Ron is now happy https://github.com/sifive/freedom-u540-c000-bootloader/pull/2 https://github.com/sifive/freedom-u540-c000-bootloader/pull/...
tux1968 8y ago
> the first person to submit a pull request that can exactly reproduce that ROM will get a HiFive Unleashed board! That's a fun challenge and a nice reward.
microcolonel 8y ago
It's good that they were able to work this out with their memory controller vendor, a lot of people will not appreciate the fact that that is an effort unto itself.

4 ms·

An Open Source Release of the Freedom U540-C000's Bootloader

59 points by nickik 8y ago

the-dude 8y ago
Title deserves mention of RISC-V board.
- nickik 8y ago
  I did when I submitted it but its not there anymore. Edit: To any admin I think it was necessary context to understand the title and I think it should be added back.
nickik 8y ago
Notice that this is really a cool development about something that SiFive was criticized for. It was picked up for example here: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RISC-V-Not-All-Open-Yet https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RISC-V-N... > All this said, note that the HiFive is no more open, today, than your average ARM SOC; and it is much less open than, e.g., Power. I realize there was a lot of hope in the early days that RISC-V implied "openness" but as we can see that is not so. There's blobs in HiFive. > Open instruction sets do not necessarily result in open implementations. An open implementation of RISC-V will require a commitment on the part of a company to opening it up at all levels, not just the instruction set. > by Ron Minnich (Google, Coreboot) Its fantastic to see that they are really pushing in that direct. Specially that they try to go as deep as possible form there. Establish a new standard people strive for, open hardware and firmware. There are many blobs left but having a platform that starts out pretty open will allow lots more development on the missing pieces. Edit: I think Ron is now happy https://github.com/sifive/freedom-u540-c000-bootloader/pull/2 https://github.com/sifive/freedom-u540-c000-bootloader/pull/...
tux1968 8y ago
> the first person to submit a pull request that can exactly reproduce that ROM will get a HiFive Unleashed board! That's a fun challenge and a nice reward.
microcolonel 8y ago
It's good that they were able to work this out with their memory controller vendor, a lot of people will not appreciate the fact that that is an effort unto itself.