"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."

Comments

ARM

[sql*kitten]

As the article says, whether they Open Source it or build a business around it, it's unlikely that ARM themselves would permit it - their business model is to develop and license their intellectual property rather than sell actual products.

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.

They need to be careful...

[Tribbles]

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.

most comments

[dstanfor]

Let's sum up most of the comments so far:

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