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Yeah...the i960mx was a missed opportunity. It was certainly oversold as "Intels RISC replacement for x86" (it was never going to be that in the real world), b
by kjs3 11y ago
Yeah...the i960mx was a missed opportunity. It was certainly oversold as "Intels RISC replacement for x86" (it was never going to be that in the real world), but it would have been interesting to see how far it would have gone if the decision hadn't been "we'll just neuter the little bastard and try and recoup some development dollars by using it as an embedded processor".
- nickpsecurity 11y ago""we'll just neuter the little bastard and try and recoup some development dollars by using it as an embedded processor"." Lmao well-put. Maybe if they saw it worded that way on the drawing board they might have seen the folly. I keep thinking of checking on the Alpha ISA licensing situation to get PALcode, etc back. Last I checked Intel and Samsung had control of licensing but it kinda disappeared. Might just stick with SPARC or RISC-V with modifications to use clever modifications from the past. Might even try to design a knock-off of i960's better features updates based on lessons learned over time.
- kjs3 11y agoI've been impressed with the RISC-V folks. Seem to have solid talent and realistic goals.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoDid you mean the main University group (s) that defined and implemented the ISA? If so, I agree they've done well. I especially loved that they open-sourced a 1+GHz 48nm core. Awesome stuff. I posted a link to Schneiers Squid thread today on a bunch of asynchronous chip work. One was a 180nm FPGA w/ several times Xilinx's performance and one a 40nm microcontroller. I imagine a combination of RISC-V with that async flow would produce one drool-worthy processor in price, performance, and NRE cost.
- thesz 11y agoCan you point out where the links are?
- nickpsecurity 11y agoEnjoy: http://pastebin.com/bakX4RRZ http://pastebin.com/bakX4RRZ
- thesz 11y agoThank you very much!
- kjs3 11y agoYeah...that 1GHz core could be the game changer as far as Open Source hardware goes. Seems pretty much anyone with an above average undergrad digital design competency has cooked up a core/ISA that ranges from the few tens to a few hundred MHz, but a real 1GHz core on a real process potentially puts it in range of the ARM/MIPS crowd performance wise (that is, out of "isn't that a cute toy" territory). I confess to not being particularly conversant with async design (it became mainstream after my time), but I'll definitely check out your links and see what I can learn. Interesting times and all that.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoMore interesting than you think: we have an open-source FPGA architecture out there now and cheap[ish] processes to implement it. http://pastebin.com/bakX4RRZ http://pastebin.com/bakX4RRZ
- kjs3 11y agoI thank you, sir, for this months reading list.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago