Subj : Re: New Pico2 To : John Larkin From : Theo Date : Tue Aug 13 2024 18:04:07 John Larkin wrote: > On 13 Aug 2024 14:01:07 +0100 (BST), Theo > wrote: > > >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. Arm are an investor in RPi, so not sure why they would give them a hard time over licensing. Theo --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3) .