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Back in the day, SiFive had a RV32 core that could fit in an Artix-7 that was pretty bare-bones. IO was random, it couldn't use the onboard DRAM, etc. It woul
by OhMeadhbh 3y ago
Back in the day, SiFive had a RV32 core that could fit in an Artix-7 that was pretty bare-bones. IO was random, it couldn't use the onboard DRAM, etc. It would be cool to see an officially supported RV32 softcore on an Artix-7. I had reasonably good experiences with the MicroBlaze back in the day, but would never think of using it for anything other than testing or education 'cause it was (very) closed source. And while I'm not the worlds biggest RISC-V cheerleader, this is the kind of thing that it's good at: "here's a tool that uses an ISA you may have already invested in. also, we're not going to try to lock you in to THAT side of the toolchain." I'm somewhat okay with AMD/Xilinx locking you in to whatever is underneath the ISA since you're probably going to have to pay for hardware somehow: either buying the FPGA or buying a catalog part (if they ever emerge.)
Also... thx for pointing out AMD bought Xilinx. I had completely forgotten about it and was mildly surprised to see AMD adopting MicroBlaze.
- brucehoult 3y ago> Back in the day, SiFive had a RV32 core that could fit in an Artix-7 that was pretty bare-bones. I did some benchmarking on a single 64 bit dual-issue U74 core with FPU, caches etc running in an Arty-100T. Just a single core, not all five cores as in U74-MC (HiFive Unmatched, VisionFive 2 etc), but it was running Linux.
- d_tr 3y agoOut of curiosity, how much of that FPGA did that configuration occupy?
- OhMeadhbh 3y agoMy memory is the E31 (RV32) used about 70% of the ARTIX-7 35T. Bruce probably remembers the stats on the U74 (RV64) better than I do. People kept stealing the ARTIX-7 100's off my desk so I never had the opportunity to play around with them.