Slashdot Mirror
"Open-Source" ARM7 Core May Be On The Way
jbp4444 writes: "From EE Times:
Swedish students weigh next step with ARM7 clone.
A group of Swedish students implemented an ARM7 core on a Xilinx chip as part of a PhD thesis - but they used only publicly available information and documentation to do it. So they may be able to "open-source" the VHDL code that they wrote. This would enable others to have royalty-free access to an ARM7 core. They are still investigating their alternatives, so it is far from a done deal. Oh yeah, at the end of the article it mentions "it's still not clear whether the BlackARM processor works properly" -- due to the time constraints of a PhD thesis, they seemed to have skimped on the testing of the chip! [but note, they say it does run applications --t] In an odd coincidence, the same issue of EE Times (Jan. 29) also had a story on automakers investigating Linux for their in-car entertainment systems. Royalty-free OS coupled with potentially royalty-free hardware has an obvious appeal to many industries."
If I were ARM, I wouldn't be worried. This thing isn't anywhere near useful. And in an industry like this, stealing IP doesn't go over very well at all. Does anyone remember the hullbaloo between iNTEL and Digital? Part of the settlement included the StrongARM processor IIRC.
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Yum!
It sort of have proves their point, since it is something done by "foreigners". It also drives home the point that they do *not* own the world, not nearly as much as they would like to think they do. It also drives home the point that the rest of the world is likely to not take very kindly to them, especially if they start wrapping themselves up in this jingoistic political claptrap.
Let's face it, alot of the planet gets rather irritated by imperialistic mutterings like that. And so would embrace the efforts folks like this.
You do not need the overhead of a gui for a car computer. Only for the entertainment console, nav aids, etc, where it would be better to keep it embedded. and where size still counts.
sounds like these guys have an interesting future ahead of them
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If a company (like a car company) wants to use arm processors in their mass-produced products, they:
1) won't use FPGAs because they're WAY too expensive
2) will find it much easier (and cheaper) to just buy a full version (like the Intel SA-110) instead of contracting out to fab their own.
Not sure the above is intended to be funny. Reads alot like those pseudo-anarchist anti-globalist screeds posted by the people who protest every time the imf/wto/etc get together.
Best Slashdot Co
They're using a Xilinx XCV1000, which is a very very high-end FPGA. Go to www.findchips.com and search for XCV1000, and you'll see prices from $1300-$2400. Not exactly cheap for a slow (not pipelined, single ALU, etc) 15-17 MHz processor. This thing isn't going to actually be useful for anything except its intended purpose: experimentation for a thesis.
FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array. If it isn't reprogrammable, it isn't an FPGA. I'm sure Actel or QuickLogic would have you believe their OTP parts are "FPGAs" but I'm afraid they just aren't.
oh bah, that's such nonsense. the term "FPGA" has become a broad term to mean basically any programmable logic more complex than a CPLD. granted that while the field part of the acronym refers the ability for these parts to being programmed in the "field," the term has become generic enough that "antifuse-FPGA" is perfectly acceptable. but whatever, it's still a valid use of the term these days, and they could be used in this case. but lighten up: nobody likes a literalist ;) hah.
About the speed: the parts Xilinx released a year ago run to 100MHz.
yeah, exactly: 100Mhz. big deal. i know from personal experience that Actel's SX (from around the same time period) operate at well over 300Mhz (though they only guarantee 250Mhz in a production setting, as not all designs will run that fast).
The main problem isn't the speed of the parts. It's the cost.
exactly, which is why antifuse clearly wins out here (if you're willing to put up with the fact that it's OTP). antifuse "FPGAs" are about 1/10th the cost of a comparable SRAM FPGA. plus it's easy to routinely get utilizations of over 95% with Antifuse: you'd be lucky to get 60% utilization on an SRAM FPGA. this is simply because the SRAM cells are too large to justify putting at every horizontal/vertical path junction. you can get 100% pin-locking on an antifuse FPGA even at full logic utilization! that's a considerably better value for your money.
the thing is, Antifuse FPGAs are superior to SRAM in absolutely every way (price, power consumption, performace and efficiency, plus you don't need an external EEPROM) except that they're only one-time programmable. hobbists usually like to get a handful of reprogrammables and "play around" with them, and that's fine. but if you're serious about making "open hardware" and using it in a device that you actually care about it would be worth your while to do good synthesis on the PC and then burn the antifuse FPGA for a high speed, low cost, low power decent device.
end rant. hah. that was longer than i intended it to be. can you tell that i used to work in Marketing at Actel? (and before you blow me off completely for that, i worked in Product Engineering too) :) more information on Antifuse can be found here. i should know, i helped write it :).
- j
Contrast this with Sun Microsystems who use the SPARC processor under license. As far as I'm aware, they don't even manufacture SPARCs themselves, but rely on a third party foundry. Why is this relevant? Because SPARCs are also used by many vendors and you can even get the chip architectures if you wanted to implement it yourself, then have your design properly verified.
ISTR that OpenCores were warned not to do an open source ARM compatible processor by ARM. This was probably because ARM is really an IP only company, and if someone comes along and builds their own which is free, then their entire market could collapse.
Then again, the ARM7 processor isn't ARM's latest offering, so they may be lenient.
If you want to know more about the ARM 7 processor, then here is the place to go.
Er, hello? We're talking FPGAs here - Field Programmable Gate Arrays. Yes, you would be able to download the latest core and configure an FPGA hardware device according to the VHDL code.
:)
Note guys, two things:
1). They haven't tested it anywhere near what the
average chip gets before it is even publically
mentioned.
2). The core runs very slowly at the moment and
lacks "basic" functionality like pipelining
and caching.
Still, it's cool and nice to see this sort of thing (see also Open Cores project, etc.) but at the moment it's a bit of academic fun and nothing more - you won't be throwing away your Athlons for now
--jcm
If you go to the Xilinx site, you'll find WEBpack ISE. This contains everything you need to do very complex FPGA designs. It's not open source, but it is free. I've not yet found any (intentional) limitations in the package :-)
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
They burnt it onto a FPGA. Which is a Field Programmable Grid Array.
Loads-a links here: http://www.mrc.uidaho.edu/fpga/
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I love 'em, I do. Lovely processor to work on. :)
Wow cool, you can download and run open source software without any special equipment like a computer and monitor and ram and disk drive?
Open source VHDL and Verilog designs are a GREAT concept.
When enough people catch on, then we'll start seeing open source VHDL compilers.
ipv6 is my vpn
Whine, whine, whine, not useful because I can't fab the chip.
Neither do they. It's a Field Programmable Gate Array. I know most of slashdot are just software people, and don't really understand hardware so let me explain: An FPGA is built of many Combinational Logic Blocks (CLB's) with flip flops, buffers, and gate level logic. To implement an FPGA, a fuse file is created from an HDL (Hardware Design Language). This fuse file is used to determine which internal connections to the FPGA will be active and inactive.
Programming an FPGA from a computer isn't too tough. A cable needs to be made up that can handle JTAG communication with the part, and voila. It's funny to see people whining that progamming an FPGA is too hard, but on other stories saying they're going to build a portable atari, or hack their Tiva box.
FPGA's can be very useful for smaller runs of a chip, especially if the design has a good chance of changing. Since a lot of FPGA's are reprogrammable, screwing up the design doesn't have as big of an impact as screwing up an asic. Also, Asics only become economical when you make a ton of them.
For example, Motorola will probably use Asics for the hardware for their phones, since they make millions. On the otherhand, Nortrhop Grumman will use FPGA's for their missile jammers, since they make runs in the 100's.
FPGA's are designed so that their can be a multitude of different arrangements of connections inside the FPGA. This leads to not being able to optomize for speed as much. They can do most of the things Asics can do, but not as fast or efficiently, since they were designed to be multi-purpose.
DAve
Still, it's cool and nice to see this sort of thing (see also Open Cores project, etc.) but at the moment it's a bit of academic fun and nothing more - you won't be throwing away your Athlons for now :)
and that's really the issue here: putting cores into an FPGA is nothing new, but i think the software-leaning slashdot crew need to get a handle on the sacrifices you make by using an FPGA (especially an SRAM-based FPGA like Xilinx or Altera). FPGAs are painfully slow when compared to an ASIC; they're really not even comparable. and when this chip doesn't even implement pipelining, it's going to have very few applications outside of casual, academic use.
while it may sound like a godsend to use VHDL to create hardware and put it in an FPGA, there's a really big difference between hardware and software. there are so many other steps that occur in creating an ASIC after the VHDL synthesis process, such as layout and floorplanning, that optimize an ASIC for speed and power consumption. an FPGA is only used to get a "rough" idea of the functionality of the chip, or to put simple "glue" logic on a board that doesn't justify spinning an ASIC. again, you really can't compare an FPGA-based processor to a real fabbed processor.
additionally, if you're looking to create a chip that you can actually use in any sort of device with reasonable speed and power consumption, you'd be much better off using a non-volatile technology FPGA from Actel or QuickLogic. while you sacrifice reprogrammability, you'll gain considerably faster speeds, considerably lower power consumption, and a lower cost chip. once you program these FPGAs they're programmed for life (so if you make a mistake you'll have to throw it out), but if you synthesize your design sufficiently using software, the benefits of such a device are far outwieghted by their lack of reprogrammability.
at any rate, the dream of "open source" hardware is a nice one, but it's not nearly as golden an opportunity as you'd think by reading the slashdot comments. hardware and software are two totally different beasts, and the tools and techniques that work on one are not guaranteed to work on the other. after working in the hardware and semiconductor fields long enough i realize that hardware companies have the really solid business models, and aren't going to see opensource as competition anywhere in the forseeable future. in fact, opensource is being embraced by the semiconductor industry to increase the "value add" of the hardware itself. i personally push Linux at my company as much as possible, as i firmly believe that selling software isn't a solid business model unless that software is highly specific, or your company enjoys a monopoly in your industry. as much as this community may want it, opensource hardware is a long way off. you'd be much better off working with hardware companies to show them why funding opensource projects is in their best interest (and as a nice co-incidence, also in the best interest of the open-source community).
- j
You kids today are pansies. I did it with vacuum tubes!
There's nothing in world like flipping the switch on a baby like that and watching the tubes start to glow, while all the lights in the physics building go dim.
You could even use it to keep your lunch warm.
kfg
I don't think the car industry is going to be all that excited about getting a 16Mhz pair of CPUs on a chip that costs a lot more then a "real" 200Mhz ARM. One that can actually multiply numbers in hardware, and you know, has been tested.
A lot can come up going froma simulated FPGA design to the real hardware. Sometimes it can be fixed just by bringing the clock speed down a bit, but other times if you had an overdriven line or something the simulator will be great and real hardware a nightmare. Of corse I have done very very little FPGA work (population count, a NFA evaluator, a few other toy projects).
None of this means the BlackARM is crap, if someone works on it for a long time it could be useful, maybe optmised for an ASIC so it is cheeper (in quantity), and faster. Or maybe just using it (as is) to exparament with CPU perphrial integration (15Mhz CPU with an AES engine). It definitly had value in providing a duel CPU on a chip test platform for a lucky (hard working) Phd candiate...
P.S. I'm assuming the pair of ARMs is on a Xylinx Virtex baised on the 16K RAM number. The Spartin line doesn't have nearly that much RAM, but that is a lot more affordable, starting at under $1. The Virtex is still quite costly, it has a lot more gates, the SRAM, and and a higher max clock if you keep the circuit chains short (i.e. pipeline).
Royalty free chips have been around for quite a long time now... Visit free_ip.com and browse their cores if you like. You see, this is nothing special, nothing new, just the spin pit on the story makes it sound so amazing and incredible... But this is par for the course, it's just another day at slashdot.
It's a relatively common CPU originally out of the UK - now made by a number of manufacturers (Compaq, Intel, Cirrus ...) it's a RISCier RISC than most - but it has just enough goodies to happily boot Linux
I often see students that wants to use some commercial product in an academic project. They contact a company that makes the component, and receive a quote that would be reasonable for a profit making business, but is outrageous for a university. They then turn around and develop a clone of the key piece of technology. The major difference now is that the web makes it possible to share the 'new' results. Software companies are particularly vulnerable to this -- GPL, GPL, GPL.
(\/)atthew
Open source hardware? Gasp! This is clearly an attempt to undermine the American Way! We must unite and stand against this Swedish communism!
So who's up for bombing sweden? I pulled a plan for a H bomb off of the internet. Didn't cost me anything, either...
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
Who the hell fabbed BlackArm for them? Too bad even if they release their "Arm instruction set chewer" we could not use that ourselves as individuals as a basis for any real work... UNLESS: Wouldn't it be nice to have an ink jet printer capable of depositing various compounds on a sheet of plastic to create solid state devices? Not for processors initially but for almost any other application... Need a power supply? Print out a bridge rectifier and some capacitors. Complexity could be achieved in layers similar to current printed circuit boards. We could have a "Rawpotatoes" for open source hardware designs to go with "Freshmeat". The ultimate goal would be a simple processor capable of running Linux where you print the hardware and compile the kernel yourself. Need more speed? Try a cluster with pages like a book... a library. Why do I find myself still prototyping circuits with a soldering iron the same way it was done by Nicola Tesla a 125 years ago? Never mind a decent sized logic circuit. Ever soldered together a flip flop? I quit after 100... A hundred bits of memory is quite enough if you are going blind soldering transistors.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.