September 2019 - Libresilicon-developers

Reminder - Next Mumble session on Sunday, 29/09/2019, 21.00 HKT
by reminder＠libresilicon.com 28 Sep '19

28 Sep '19

Hello List! Just a small reminder for our next Mumble Sessions on this Sunday, 29/09/2019, at 21.00 Hong Kong Time. Please join us as usual at our Mumble Server murmur.libresilicon.com at Port 64738, the Channel is IC. Thanks for the attention!

1 0

NLNet Funding Proposals for the Libre RISC-V SoC: call for participation
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 25 Sep '19

25 Sep '19

[please do remove all but libre-riscv-dev when replying, thx] https://libre-riscv.org/nlnet_proposals/ A series of funding proposals, each for EUR 50,000, have been submitted to NLNet. These are for charitable donations and may be given to either individuals or to Universities (not to Corporations) for completion of an allotted milestone. The basic idea is to think through and plan for commercial completion all of the tasks that will make the Libre RISC-V SoC a success. It's a lot! We have the following: - a second Vulkan 3D driver, which will be a port of AMDVLK. similar to swiftshader, for the Libre RISCV SoC, except taking into account the Vectorisation, predication and custom accelerated opcodes. - a video acceleration initiative: with NEON assembler being up to the job of decoding 720p video on recent ARM64 processors, the idea is to design instructions that will do the job and then follow through getting the code upstream. - two related proposals which, in combination, will result in an actual 180nm ASIC being taped out at TSMC. - a formal mathematical proof of the hardware design, proving inviolate guarantees of its correctness. this because although auditing the code is possible, it is both laborious, error prone, and could be compromised. mathematical proofs may be run by anyone and are inviolate. - an augmentation of gcc to support the processor’s parallel and vectorisation capabilities. Yes, really: 180nm ASICs only cost around EUR 600 per square millimetre, and with around 20 or so mm^2 it is completely within the realm of possibility for an NLNet Grant to fund a test ASIC. With each square millimetre being around 40,000 gates in 180nm, that's around 800,000 gates, which is enormous. We would then have a proven ASIC, and moving up to 40nm or below, which would require around the USD 2m mark, is a far less risky proposition. The irony is that whilst these funding proposals are quite easy to write, we also need to find people willing to do the work! In particular, we need at least one EU Citizen per project. They do not have to be permanently resident in the EU, they do however need an EU residence. Yes this includes the UK at the time of writing. This is an extremely important strategic project that puts you - software libre developers - in the driving seat of modern technology instead of picking up the reverse engineering crumbs that fall from the Corporate table with at least a 2 year delay. If you would like to help and actually receive donations (directly transferred) from NLNet for doing so, please do contact me directly or on libre-riscv-dev. L. -- --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

4 10

Reminder - Next Mumble session on Sunday, 22/09/2019, 21.00 HKT
by reminder＠libresilicon.com 21 Sep '19

21 Sep '19

Hello List! Just a small reminder for our next Mumble Sessions on this Sunday, 22/09/2019, at 21.00 Hong Kong Time. Please join us as usual at our Mumble Server murmur.libresilicon.com at Port 64738, the Channel is IC. Thanks for the attention!

1 0

NLNet funding available
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

I just spoke to Michiel from NLNet and he would be delighted to receive an application to fund libresilicon. The page is here http://nlnet.nl/PET and the deadline for this round is oct 1st. After that it will be dec 1st. Need any help do get in touch. L. -- --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

3 6

Reminder - Next Mumble session on Sunday, 15/09/2019, 21.00 HKT
by reminder＠libresilicon.com 14 Sep '19

14 Sep '19

Hello List! Just a small reminder for our next Mumble Sessions on this Sunday, 15/09/2019, at 21.00 Hong Kong Time. Please join us as usual at our Mumble Server murmur.libresilicon.com at Port 64738, the Channel is IC. Thanks for the attention!

1 0

Pad Cells
by Hagen SANKOWSKI 11 Sep '19

11 Sep '19

Hello Ference and Philipp, Hello List! Today in our Mumble Session we also talked about the effort for Pad Cells. Well, there are cells we can look at under http://research.kek.jp/people/ikeda/openIP/openIP_2.pdf This paper is in Japanese, the schematics are understandable. I am not sure, why this guy uses two grounds, but this cells are a good starting point. As I know from Philipp, he already tried to get the schematics (and the Spice Model at the end of the paper) into the Standard Cell Generator. Please, Ference and Philipp, talked with each other and kept me/us on topic. It would be nice, to handle the Pad Cells quite flexible and generated. Regards Hagen Sankowski -- support LibreSilicon to get back into the Clean Room https://www.gofundme.com/f/libresilicon-cleanroom-rent

5 6

Reminder - Next Mumble session on Sunday, 08/09/2019, 21.00 HKT
by reminder＠libresilicon.com 07 Sep '19

07 Sep '19

Hello List! Just a small reminder for our next Mumble Sessions on this Sunday, 08/09/2019, at 21.00 Hong Kong Time. Please join us as usual at our Mumble Server murmur.libresilicon.com at Port 64738, the Channel is IC. Thanks for the attention!

1 0