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> "...so that anyone with some computing background can build a processor, freely." They could already do that. I designed and laid out in silicon a 32 bit pr
by GrumpyYoungMan 5y ago
> "...so that anyone with some computing background can build a processor, freely."
They could already do that. I designed and laid out in silicon a 32 bit processor as part of my undergraduate studies in computer engineering.
- offtop5 5y agoCan I run Linux on it ? I almost feel like being able to completely rebuilt computer technology from raw materials should be encased in a book somewhere. Hypothetically if we dropped you and 100 other engineers in the woods with metal working equipment could you get something resembling a computer working in 5 years ? Or in this post-apocalyptic landscape would it be more practical to dig in landfills for old GameCubes to retrofit
- analognoise 5y agoYes. OpenSPARC has been free/available since 2005. There are a multitude of others of similar vintage that can also boot Linux. It's a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
- 3arn0wl 5y agoOn RISC-V? Yes... Well sort of. There are people working on ports of Fedora, Debian and OpenSuse (I think) and I've seen some version of BSD working on SiFive's boards. Debian is said to be 95% complete. Ubuntu have also announced that they're working on a port, and SkiffOS is said to be ready to run on RISC-V too. There was also a demo of AOSP working on 3 XuanTie 910 cores a few weeks ago. Of course, then you need apps to be ported over, and that might take longer.