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Project IceStorm Passes Another Milestone: Building a CPU

Posted by samzenpus on from the building-it-better dept.

beckman101 writes: FPGAs — specialized, high speed chips with large arrays of configurable logic — are usually highly proprietary. Anyone who has used one is familiar with the buggy and node-locked accompanying tools that FPGA manufacturers provide. Project IceStorm aims to change that by reverse-engineering some Lattice FPGAs to produce an open-source toolchain, and today it passed a milestone. The J1 open-source CPU is building under IceStorm, and running on real hardware. The result is a fairly puny microcontroller, but possibly the world's most open one.

4 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. An open cpu? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm pretty sure CPUs are supposed to be closed so as to keep dust out.

    1. Re:An open cpu? by davester666 · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, the fan you put on the CPU blows the dust away.

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  2. Forth? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ? Program Forth in who want

  3. Re:Most people won't care by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Funny

    They don't understand that Intel/AMD CPUs could or will have backdoors. If not now, then very soon in the future.

    I usually decap my CPUs and inspect them before installing them. I haven't seen anything suspicious so far.

    The real problem is Windows. Having to disassemble/inspect the OS before installing wasn't too bad, it's the constant stream of patches that gets me down.

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