From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263815AbTDXT2U (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2003 15:28:20 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263825AbTDXT2U (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2003 15:28:20 -0400 Received: from jive.SoftHome.net ([66.54.152.27]:19610 "HELO jive.SoftHome.net") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S263815AbTDXT2R (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2003 15:28:17 -0400 From: Balram Adlakha To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Flame Linus to a crisp! Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 01:09:14 +0530 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 References: <20030424190207.319431257A9@mx12.arcor-online.net> <3EA83BBA.5060502@techsource.com> In-Reply-To: <3EA83BBA.5060502@techsource.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200304250109.14349.b_adlakha@softhome.net> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Friday 25 Apr 2003 1:02 am, Timothy Miller wrote: > Daniel Phillips wrote: > >On Thu 24 Apr 03 16:45, Linus Torvalds wrote: > >>If open hardware is what you want, FPGA's are actually getting to the > >>point where you can do real CPU's with them. They won't be gigahertz, and > >>they won't have big nice caches (but hey, you might make something that > >>clocks fairly close to memory speeds, so you might not care about the > >>latter once you have the former). > >> > >>They're even getting reasonably cheap. > > > >The big problem with FPGAs at the moment is that the vendors want you to > > use their tools, which come with license agreements that limit your > > options in arbitrary ways, otherwise this would be peachy. > > For their smaller devices, Xilinx has a free "WebPack" which is a > complete Verilog synthesizer (I don't know if it does VHDL), as well as > place & route, of course. I think it'll do up to Virtex II 250. It > also tends use fewer gates for a given design than the version of > Leonardo Spectrum we have. It just doesn't have a simulator, which is > vital to any good development process. Also, the Web Pack only runs > under Windows. Maybe it'll work with WINE? > > I've been working on my own 32-bit CPU design for FPGA lately. Maybe we > can get Linux to run on it. :) By the way, I'm just curious, I don't have much knowledge of this, can anyone create a processor with the x86 instruction set and sell it? Like did AMD and transmeta and all get a license from Intel?