hthi wrote:https://riscv.org/. Isa for open source, no restrictive license hardware.
Guaranteed Non-Standard Encoding Space
To support development of proprietary custom extensions, portions of the encoding space are
guaranteed to never be used by standard extensions.
tomazzi wrote:hthi wrote:https://riscv.org/. Isa for open source, no restrictive license hardware.
Not really.
I've just started to read the specifications and I've found this:
The RISC-V Instruction Set Manual, page 61:Guaranteed Non-Standard Encoding Space
To support development of proprietary custom extensions, portions of the encoding space are
guaranteed to never be used by standard extensions.
In English:
Just like this is in case of ARM, every chip will have proprietary bootloaders and proprietary extensions, which will be not available for open source solutions, not to mention Free Software.
Regards.
edit: page 61, not 62 ofc.
FSF wrote: The BeagleBoard (various versions) as well as the PandaBoard use the TI OMAP family of SoCs. These come with free startup software as well as free drivers for the peripherals.
pylkko wrote:But is this really so? I may not understand some part of your communication, but it seems to me that you are saying that since the specification allows for non-standard extensions, this automatically causes the situation that every chip manufacturer will certainly use non-standard extensions, make them proprietary and also that they will have proprietary bootloaders.
tomazzi wrote:There's a huge difference between "allowing" and "guaranteeing support" for non-standard, proprietary extensions.
Open ISA specification has completly nothing to do with open hardware (implementation of the ISA).
The ARM ISA is also open, but if You'll take a look at the page linked by Head_on_a_Stick above, then You should quickly realize what's the reality.
Regards.
and it continues...The RISC-V authors aim to provide several CPU designs freely available under a BSD license. Such licenses allow derivative works, such as RISC-V chip designs, to be either open and free, like RISC-V itself, or closed and proprietary.
By contrast, commercial chip vendors such as ARM Holdings and MIPS Technologies charge substantial license fees for the use of their patents.[8] They also require non-disclosure agreements before releasing documents that describe their designs' advantages and instruction set. Many design advances are completely proprietary, never described even to customers. The secrecy interferes with legitimate public educational use, security auditing, and the development of public, low–cost free and open-source software compilers, and operating systems.
A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board.
pylkko wrote:SO, if I am getting this right, even if RISCV does not use a license model that requires derivative works to be only open and free (for example GPL), it nevertheless is very different from ARM and especially in the context that the OP was talking about, the license.
tomazzi wrote:Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) is merely a draft. It does not describe or define the final hardware. For a real-life example You can take the x86 ISA - it is used by both Intel and AMD, but the hardware is completely different and closed (proprietary).
tomazzi wrote:pylkko wrote:SO, if I am getting this right, even if RISCV does not use a license model that requires derivative works to be only open and free (for example GPL), it nevertheless is very different from ARM and especially in the context that the OP was talking about, the license.
Apparently You don't get it.
pylkko wrote:So, does that mean that you do recognize - or that you do not recognize - that when you said "Just like this is in case of ARM, every chip will have proprietary bootloaders" that it is not actually the case that all ARM platforms have proprietary bootloaders?
pylkko wrote:Are you saying or not that RISC-V is just like ARM when you look at the licenses/rights to make further products and that all the future bootloaders absolutely have to be - just like with ARM - proprietary and non free?? It is indeed really hard to get what you are saying here. It seems like you are using a lot of strong verbiage, but that the actual content of the statements are quite obscure. It seems as if you are dismissing RISC-V as "just like ARM", whereas the statement cited from Wikipedia is claiming that RISC-V is not just like ARM in many interesting ways. Is this not the case?
tomazzi wrote:Every ARM-based chip I know of is using proprietary bootloader, even such "primitive" ones like the NXP/Philips LPCxxxx series.
If You know about some ARM-based chip that does not use bootloader (proprietary initialization code) - please let me know.
FSF wrote:The BeagleBoard (various versions) as well as the PandaBoard use the TI OMAP family of SoCs. These come with free startup software as well as free drivers for the peripherals.
First, RISC-V is not a product yet - it works only in the simulators (not counting that reference chip, which can be seen only on a photo).
I'm saying that there's completely no guarantee that the hardware will be open in the final product.
And taking into account that guaranteed support for proprietary extensions, I do claim that RISC-V is just like ARM, which have also started as an educational project.
Regards.
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