The RTL source was released under the GPLv2, GPL and hardware is a bit iffy since synthesis isn't the same as compilation, but depending on who owns the IP (in

The RTL source was released under the GPLv2, GPL and hardware is a bit iffy since synthesis isn't the same as compilation, but depending on who owns the IP (in this case Oracle) they could make the case you need to open source your RTL source as well. I personally wouldn't invest the high hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars needed to produce a chip without getting a license agreement first with the ambiguity of the license, and which point I would probably consider the POWER architectures (like many FPGAs vendors used to) or ARM. In the case of pushing it to FPGAs, the OpenSPARC would use a ton of resources to the point where I'd rather have a dedicated off chip processor, or a FPGA with a built in processor. I know people have put the OpenSPARC code on FPGAs, but I don't know of any use in industry in FPGAs or ASICS. I'd be interested if anybody knows any.