Anyone really use those opensource CPUs (OR1K, Lattice Mico32, Leon)?

indi.microfpga.com is bsd open source (acknowledge of copyright but free to develop) but not developed to full extent of utility yet, i need a good protocol reference for IDE LBA access so i can develop a hard disk boot system (cheaper than flash, and would give many

Nico,

I don't make things up. I just read about it in eetimes.

opencores is up for sale, and there is no one who cares to "take it."

What does that say?

Austin

Ok, sure. But at one point you was offering a ASIC license for $150k.

Cheers, Jon

Austin,

From their web page, it looks as though they are in the market for a corporate partner (someone to pay the bandwidth bills) not for a total buyout. I think many people/companies would love to have opencores but the problem is how to monatize it. Bandwidth isn't free you know.

---Matthew Hicks

Since there seems to be some confusion on the PicoBlaze license, the btter choices might be PacoBlaze, or the quite similar LatticeMico8 ?

-jg

Jim,

I was corrected by Ken Chapman, that to download PicoBlaze, one has to acknowledge they have read and agree to the "use restrictions."

Peter and I had a chat about this subject: any IP that is specific to a device (that would be Lattice, Altera, or Xilinx) is optimized for their device, and would be suitably poor in any other technology. So, if you want something that is technology agnostic, you would end up buying something from a 3rd party, and paying them (or your own team) to make different versions of it that are all code and cycle identical, and technology independent (? I am presuming this is possible: it may not be!).

So, that is why if I designing an ASIC I buy an 'XYZ' (insert ARM, PPC, MIPS, or whatever you like here) core: I know what I am getting, I can get it for 130nm, 90nm, 65nm, etc.; I can emulate it in an FPGA (if I have to); I can ask questions and get answers.

If I want to get the most for my money, I decide whose chip I am going to use, and I use their tools and IP. I "hope" that my c code can be compiled and run on another vendor if I decide I must switch to another vendor (for whatever reason).

The one time I had a major project of many uP's on many pcb's, and we changed from Intel to Motorola (gasp!), it was not trivial to port all the code (written in c) from one to the other platform....I wouldn't want to do it today, either. But at least, it was possible, and it could be done (and we did it successfully).

As for support of old code:

Xilinx offers the last best and debugged version of each code build, for free, to customers who need to maintain an old design.

Of course, we can not provide the old Windoze version, but a trip to the Saturday Flea Market at Foothill (or equivalent) will get you all the old Microsquat stuff you want. As well, we no longer have rights to distribute nor support certain old schematic tools, or simulators, but as customers, you have the rights to use the old versions to fix old stuff (they have archives, too).

So, be my guest, pick a processor: pick the one that you will get the most use from, be the most efficient to implement in the technology targeted, make the best use of code already written, and will be maintainable for the lifetime of your product lines.

Austin

So what i understand here is that If i want something technology agnostic, i will get it from opencores or develop it myself (my budget is limited). Note that there is usually only a 2%-10% of the overall code that needs to be differentiated across vendors (i'm referring to soft core i'm writing which works for a 2-processor system on an X- FPGA but would work with little work on an A-, L- etc one).

I've written a 32-bit 5-stage pipeline RISC core (no coprocessor for exceptions accounted) that maps its brains out on block RAM for all storage (except pipeline registers) and only takes up 35% of the XC3S200 slices and runs at decent speed (~50MHz). It is a great speed given that most parts are written at almost behavioral level (the ALU, PC update logic, branch unit, load-store unit, all this stuff). And i also don't remember the source code line count but should be quite small.

Anyway, i stand my ground, the KCPSM2 is beautiful on the XC3S200, 170 to 96 slices make no big difference to me. And it is device-agnostic. Still i can't understand why people are restricted to use X reference designs that are provided AS-IS.

This is different to changing implementation medium for a given soft core. This is not a proper example if you refer to what i understand.

Nikolaos Kavvadias

In article , austin writes: |> opencores is up for sale, and there is no one who cares to "take it." |> |> What does that say?

That it is not profitable to give free hosting, especially not to a high-traffic site?

I don't see how you relate the *site* opencores.org to the open cores on that site. The site might change to closedip.com through the sale, but the open cores (as in GPL, BSD or whatever "open" license) wouldn't vanish and most likely reappear e.g. on Sourceforge or somewhere else.

Rainer

In news:f72otn$ snipped-for-privacy@cnn.xilinx.com timestamped Wed, 11 Jul 2007

07:19:34 -0700, austin posted: |------------------------------------------------------------------------| |"[..] | | | |Additionally, a massive amount of work goes into testing and | |re-optimizing every core when the technology node changes. Who will pay| |for that? Who will warrant or guarantee operation? Who supplies the | |test bench vectors to verify proper operation? | | | |Austin" | |------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Hello,

Testing does not guarantee correctness.

Regards, Colin Paul Gloster

Rainer,

The way I read the articles is different from how you read them(?):

Sounds like they will "go away" unless they find someone to buy them.

Austin

But it helps....

Austin

Noah,

You should sell your agnostic IP.

I am sure Ken is flattered to hear how "elegant" you think his soft processor is.

My example was just to illustrate that changing your "standard uP" is a non-trivial, and expensive thing to do.

Austin

On a sunny day (Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:21:15 -0700) it happened austin wrote in :

So, the only 'value' is the Verilog and VHDL code, not so much the 'open cores' label. The correct place where to put it is on a large archive such as ftp://sunsite.unc.edu if it is released under GPL, a simple email to the maintainer would probably solve that. Lost of people make money of open source Redhat, Suse, etc... If they try to cash in on 'open cores' as a label it will be a really disappointing experience. It only costs money to run a server without irritating ads:-)

That nobody is interested in the brand 'Opencores'. But according to the magazine articles you refer to, they attract a lot of engineers working with programmable logic and ASIC. SO the content of the website is attractive enough. It would be a great buy for an FPGA vendor to push their own products.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

All,

I don't know if we (whether user or contributor to opencores project) and You (FPGA/ASIC company) can live better with or without opencores site.

I only hope, if really the opencores site will go off, the contributors will put their project to other open-source sites (i.e. sourceforge but any other will be ok).

Just a little remind... once upon a time there were few commercial C/C++ compilers. Today many commercial compilers doesn't exist more and many firms use gnu C/C++ and gnu assembler/linker [maybe/surely You too (FPGA companies) use it].

GNU C/C++ seems to be a clear example of good open source product that has more chance to have a very long life.

Is there any other project that can boast 22 year of life without being obsolete ? Yes maybe yes but in IT is a very good target both for commercial and free projects!

How this happen ? I don't know... maybe/surely company having interest in it give him money because so they (the company) can use it and so they can build product to sell.

And yes, there are a lot of opensource projects that disappear after few monthis.

I don't want to state all the cores/software should be free/opensurce, but the I think that we all needs both kind of cores/software (both open and commercial).

Maybe in the future companies that today strongly defend the commercial licenses could make more money because more users of open cores are available to buy their product or because using open source they build more product to sell.

And Maybe in the future peoples that strongly defend open source could decide to buy commercial product because had good experience with other related free products.

Then the problem is not whether are better commercial or open sourced product but if are better good or bad product (both opensource and commercial).

Sandro

P.S. Sorry for my poor english. I hope concepts were clear anyway

thanks for your kind words :) But you know i can't really expect it to sell without support of decent tools, application examples, etc. I'm positive about i have in mind and the early work on automation tools (even made a custom instruction/functional-unit generator prototype:

but i'm far from delivering the IP with tools. The IP (platform) should complete by December (part of my Ph.D.) but not most of the tools...

PicoBlaze is a great 8-bit processor architecture! I never liked 8x51,

68xx (but i like the 16-bit 68k series and 6502 of course with the extra index register if i recall this correctly, it's been some time), z80 (sorry!) and most 8-bit architectures. Certainly, these COTS were meant to be stable for wide adoption and stability and long (everlasting) life cycles were mandatory for everyone back then. But now low-volume production and ease of differentiation/customization are really meaningful for a good number of cases.

OK, I guess.

Nikolaos Kavvadias

Jan,

Seems there are other announcements in this area, too:

I would absolutely just love it if open source IP for FPGAs could be a vibrant and healthy business! But it seems that there is enough difference between the open software world, and the open hardware world to make it not to be.

So, the question is: what is needed to make the model work?

Austin

On a sunny day (Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:48:18 -0700) it happened austin wrote in :

FPGA's in DIL 48 pin packages available in local and online shops at low prices.

Certainly it would look like a good fit for Lattice to host this. Then they can develop an eco system around their own OpenCores, whilst allowing others space to live as well.

I'd imagine the upper echelons of Xilinx would gag on their own legal-red-tape, even thinking about this idea ;)

Companies _can_ have too many lawyers (but never too many engineers :)

-jg