5 ms·

Unfortunately, 1000 eur is stil a lot for a toy :(. I am sure that the day that they can deliver a 400EUR board the number of developers will explote.

jessfraz 8y ago
This one is 59 american dollars... https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive1 https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive1 hope that helps!
- ribalda 8y ago
  If only it could run Linux.... I have enough AtTiny boards at home
  - 0815test 8y ago
    No reason why it couldn't... https://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit https://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%2...
throwaway_se099 8y ago
A lot of developers can surely get by with a QEMU RISC-V image, which exists and is known to boot at least Fedora.
tverbeure 8y ago
Here's how I got my feet wet with RISC-V, for next to nothing: - I bought a cheap FPGA board. Pretty much anything is large enough for a low performance RISC-V CPU. - I added a small design with a picorv32 CPU and experimented with that first. - I designed my own little RISC-V CPU. I've designed digital hardware for decades, and I've learned all about CPUs in college etc, it was still eye opening to actually design one myself. - I write blog posts about all the hobby stuff that I do now. I never did that before, and I'm not looking for a large audience or anything. But what I discovered is that I learn way more about a subject when I write about it: a major part of it is that I want to avoid public embarrassment about writing something wrong. :-) By writing about it, I have to understand things better than when I don't. This may not be the best route for those who don't already have a hardware background, but there are various open source tools now with make it accessible to hobbyists as well. It's been a very fun journey.
- bogomipz 8y ago
  >"I write blog posts about all the hobby stuff that I do now." What is your blog? I would be interested in reading how you designed your own RISC-V chip. >"This may not be the best route for those who don't already have a hardware background, but there are various open source tools now with make it accessible to hobbyists as well." Can you recommend some of those open source tools that would aid in learning for people who don't already have hardware backgrounds?
  - tverbeure 8y ago
    Here you go: http://tomverbeure.github.io http://tomverbeure.github.io This one is specifically about the RISC-V core: https://tomverbeure.github.io/risc-v/2018/11/19/A-Bug-Free-RISC-V-Core-without-Simulation.html https://tomverbeure.github.io/risc-v/2018/11/19/A-Bug-Free-R... > Can you recommend some of those open source tools that would aid in learning for people who don't already have hardware backgrounds? I haven't played with them myself, but LiteX and FuseSoC are things to look into. There is now also a whole fully open source tool suite to go from RTL (Verilog) all the way to a compiled bitstream for Lattice iCE40 and ECP5 FPGAs. That's not necessarily for beginners though.

jessfraz 8y ago

This one is 59 american dollars... https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive1 https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive1 hope that helps!

ribalda 8y ago
If only it could run Linux.... I have enough AtTiny boards at home
- 0815test 8y ago
  No reason why it couldn't... https://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit https://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%2...

throwaway_se099 8y ago

A lot of developers can surely get by with a QEMU RISC-V image, which exists and is known to boot at least Fedora.

tverbeure 8y ago

Here's how I got my feet wet with RISC-V, for next to nothing: - I bought a cheap FPGA board. Pretty much anything is large enough for a low performance RISC-V CPU. - I added a small design with a picorv32 CPU and experimented with that first. - I designed my own little RISC-V CPU. I've designed digital hardware for decades, and I've learned all about CPUs in college etc, it was still eye opening to actually design one myself. - I write blog posts about all the hobby stuff that I do now. I never did that before, and I'm not looking for a large audience or anything. But what I discovered is that I learn way more about a subject when I write about it: a major part of it is that I want to avoid public embarrassment about writing something wrong. :-) By writing about it, I have to understand things better than when I don't. This may not be the best route for those who don't already have a hardware background, but there are various open source tools now with make it accessible to hobbyists as well. It's been a very fun journey.

bogomipz 8y ago
>"I write blog posts about all the hobby stuff that I do now." What is your blog? I would be interested in reading how you designed your own RISC-V chip. >"This may not be the best route for those who don't already have a hardware background, but there are various open source tools now with make it accessible to hobbyists as well." Can you recommend some of those open source tools that would aid in learning for people who don't already have hardware backgrounds?
- tverbeure 8y ago
  Here you go: http://tomverbeure.github.io http://tomverbeure.github.io This one is specifically about the RISC-V core: https://tomverbeure.github.io/risc-v/2018/11/19/A-Bug-Free-RISC-V-Core-without-Simulation.html https://tomverbeure.github.io/risc-v/2018/11/19/A-Bug-Free-R... > Can you recommend some of those open source tools that would aid in learning for people who don't already have hardware backgrounds? I haven't played with them myself, but LiteX and FuseSoC are things to look into. There is now also a whole fully open source tool suite to go from RTL (Verilog) all the way to a compiled bitstream for Lattice iCE40 and ECP5 FPGAs. That's not necessarily for beginners though.