Subj : Re: New Pico2 To : theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk From : John Larkin Date : Tue Aug 13 2024 09:12:24 On 13 Aug 2024 14:01:07 +0100 (BST), Theo wrote: >Richard Kettlewell wrote: >> It’s a slightly odd device, isn’t it? >> >> If you wanted to explore RISC-V then there’s more flexible options. If >> you just wanted a microcontroller for something and didn’t care too much >> about CPU architecture then the dual-architecture thing is wasted. Two >> entire CPU cores that you don’t get to use. > >Microcontroller RISC-V cores are so small that I presume it's just thrown on >there as a test to see how things pan out. You can do a basic RV32 in a few >hundred lines of SystemVerilog and, if it doesn't have its own on-chip >memory, it takes pretty minimal area. It's the area for on-chip RAM, on-chip >flash, registers, caches and TLBs that costs. > >It sounds like one of their devs had a hobby core on his github and they put >it on the chip just because they could. What I'm more interested in is what >QA they did on it and what tools they used. It's easy to write a core but >embarassing if it doesn't do what you think it does[1]. Perhaps the >'enabling/disabling' mechanism is a chicken bit to wall it off in case >something bad is discovered in it. > >Theo > >[1] https://ghostwriteattack.com/ Long term, the ARM license may be a liability. --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3) .