[HN Gopher] PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC Is an Open Source Alternati...
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PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC Is an Open Source Alternative to Raspberry
Pi Board
Author : hippospark
Score : 42 points
Date : 2020-09-04 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnx-software.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnx-software.com)
| monocasa wrote:
| Oof, GPU by Imagination Technologies.
|
| Here's hoping their close brush with death opened them to the
| idea of open sourcing their code.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Oof, GPU by Imagination Technologies.
|
| My first thought as well. On the other hand... baby steps. We
| need a chip like this very much. If the first ones are slow or
| too proprietary that may be OK, it is still pushing the RISC-V
| ecosystem in the right direction. It will help validate a lot
| of software which will enable more open designs by having
| things ready to go.
| bfuclusion wrote:
| Sweet. I'll monitor this an order a non-gpu version when it comes
| out. Most of my stuff just needs a serial console.
| qchris wrote:
| It looks like it has some details on "slow" i/o like UART and
| I2C, but not sure if that counts things like analog PWM timers
| for certain pins, like there are on RPis. Does anyone have any
| more information on that? You can do it all in software on a
| UART, but I think that can be a little more tricky. Since so many
| basic embedded projects can be helped with that kind of
| functionality, it would be awesome if it was available.
| makapuf wrote:
| One of the comments I made to myself was that on the die shots,
| USB3 part is as big as a CPU core ! What would need so much
| silicon ? Isn't USB3 hardware more or less a serial bus? Is it
| logic or memory or analog interface parts here? I am curious.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| It has to implement all the old versions of USB too
| simcop2387 wrote:
| There's a great deal of communication that happens outside the
| operating system, and a bunch of different multiplexing modes
| and things like that. There's at least 4 different speeds it's
| going to need to talk at (1.5mbps, 12mbps, 480mbps, and 5gbps)
| with a good deal of synchronization and other bits. There's a
| rather decent amount of logic that has to be implemented, and I
| wouldn't be shocked if you end up needing what basically
| amounts to another CPU for the controller itself to manage the
| entire connection and negotiation. Depending on the physical
| construction it might also need some decent power transistors
| if it's also handling the 2 amp current limit on usb3.0
| internally (rather than signalling ones outside the chip).
| ColanR wrote:
| Promising hardware, though this isn't looking like comparable
| hardware even to the Raspberry Pi Zero. Only has a quad-core
| 64-bit RISC-V (RV64GC) processor at 500+ MHz. RAM size not
| specified. If it was priced in the $5-15 range it would be more
| or less practical, but higher than that I'd be buying it solely
| for the architecture novelty.
| simcop2387 wrote:
| It's still a decent start, and I'm hoping future versions will
| begin open sourcing the rest of the chip core like the memory
| controller. It'd be nice to have a good DDR IP core for things
| like this.
|
| EDIT: Removed a bit of the comment from a misunderstanding from
| reading the article
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