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Why do you think an open source CPU design can't be manufactured by a fab? There are economics of scale at play but the entry level keep going down while the m

by Iv 7y ago

Why do you think an open source CPU design can't be manufactured by a fab? There are economics of scale at play but the entry level keep going down while the market for open source grows. I don't expect open-source ASIC to suddenly come to life and compete with the latest Intel, but I could see an open and verifiable design taking the place of microcontrollers in many places where cost is more a factor than performances. Or rather, where you need a known level of performances but that anything above that threshold is waste: HDD controllers, ethernet controllers, power supply controllers, etc... I am predicting that at one point a Chinese fab will manufacture a batch of an open source competitor to some ARM Cortex chips and that it will catch up because of a mix of inferior prices, open doc and community and ideological reasons.

wmf 7y ago
Why do you think an open source CPU design can't be manufactured by a fab? That's possible but it doesn't enable the feedback loop where you can modify it, use your own modifications immediately, then contribute them back to the community. FPGAs support that loop, but only for accelerators. There are economics of scale at play but the entry level keep going down Everything I've read says that the cost to tape out is going up. I could see an open and verifiable design taking the place of microcontrollers in many places where cost is more a factor than performances. Yeah, but why would a community form around that? What's cool about saving a few pennies for some chip companies?