Hi Luke
Also we've decided that we will try to apply for this sponsorship from an anonymous sponsor which promised 250kUSD to someone who might develop a truly free GPU.
clarification: the design has to be libre: the process and geometry on which it is manufactured does not.
funding will *not* be made available to put the design into silicon as the project has another route by which that can be achieved (at zero financial charge) as long as the entire RTL is libre-licensed.
the requirements are that the *ENTIRE* software stack (matching gallium3d driver would probably do it) and the entire RTL design (sufficient to run in an FPGA) must be done within that budget... and it must be done by a team that shows sufficient expertise such that risk will be REDUCED not INCREASED.
the software would most likely need to be LGPLv2+ or BSD/MIT licensed, and the hardware must without a shadow of doubt be BSD or MIT licensed *WITH NO NON-COMMERCIAL CLAUSES*.
any proposals will be competing against straight-up licensing of Vivante GC800 and using etnaviv. that is a known, proven and tested combination that will have a well-above-average reduction in risk.
(IMHO: Since we're the only ones working on a free manufacturing process, we're basically the only ones who could be chosen for that sponsorship, if they really would care about the meaning of truly Libre)
that's a misunderstanding of the project's goals. the project's goals are to create a chip that leverages the *cost reductions* that can be achieved through utilising libre-licensed RTL and libre-licensed software.
now, i happen to be the one who can influence decisions such that libre projects and developers will be prioritised... but the prioritisation *has* to take into account risk-reduction as well.
Got it.
Manili (Mohammad Amin) joined the devteam yesterday and will help with developing the GPU of which we will show a prototype hopefully soon to this anonymous sponsor.
@Manili: What SD card controller should we be using for our test SoC?
http://libre-riscv.org/shakti/m_class/sdmmc/ contains every libre-licensed sdmmc RTL i've been able to find (non-GPL because there's absolutely no way in hell any commercial chip can use GPL)
Ah! The SD controller is for the test SoC, which we will use to test the GPU. It will not be part of the actual GPU we would be shipping to your customer. The controller will be within our free SoC which we will produce with LibreSilicon and sell physical products from as Lanceville Technologies in order to buy food and pay the rent :-)
BTW: As we've already determined in our Mumble sessions (with more than one lawyer giving us the same answer): The GPL does not cover tape-outs. When taping a design out, you don't have to give a fuck (plain and clear) about a license which is based on copyrighted material. That's why we had to introduce a non-profit foundation in order to hold the intellectual property rights of #LibreSilicon.
Cheers David