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SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

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11–20 of 51 posts

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#11
post #4

When can I buy an affordable, complete RISC-V computer? I've been long planning to cook my own with FPGA but it seems like soon we'll start getting affordable RISC-V CPUs with other utility support?

There are none yet. RISC-V is likely to appear in embedded and mobile devices before a full desktop machine is competitive with Intel processors.

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#12
post #4

When can I buy an affordable, complete RISC-V computer? I've been long planning to cook my own with FPGA but it seems like soon we'll start getting affordable RISC-V CPUs with other utility support?

With QEMU you can already do amazing things. Every component required by Linux From Scratch has been stable, and you can get a Fedora/Debian image for that as well.

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#13

I've only had a passing interest in learning assembly. It's always been in the "maybe one day" category. But after learning about how small the RISC-V instruction set is (less than 50 apparently, but I can't find a citation for that anywhere), I'm far more motivated to get into it.

The base instruction set is small enough to fit on a card. Of course adding the floating point, vector extensions, etc. would make it a bit harder to squeeze into a single page, but I think it would still end up smaller than the x64 spec.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1617/ECAD+Arch/files/docs/...

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#14
post #11
post #4

When can I buy an affordable, complete RISC-V computer? I've been long planning to cook my own with FPGA but it seems like soon we'll start getting affordable RISC-V CPUs with other utility support?

There are none yet. RISC-V is likely to appear in embedded and mobile devices before a full desktop machine is competitive with Intel processors.

Why not embedded? It seems like that would happen well before full desktop machines and competitive speeds.

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#15

I've only had a passing interest in learning assembly. It's always been in the "maybe one day" category. But after learning about how small the RISC-V instruction set is (less than 50 apparently, but I can't find a citation for that anywhere), I'm far more motivated to get into it.

>But after learning about how small the RISC-V instruction set is (less than 50 apparently, but I can't find a citation for that anywhere), I'm far more motivated to get into it.

from the times when x86 wasn't that big: http://pastraiser.com/cpu/i8080/i8080_opcodes.html

30 years ago we were typing the hex codes of those commands straight into the Forth words bodies using the mental copy of that table (as you see it has very logical easy to remember organization)

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#16

I've only had a passing interest in learning assembly. It's always been in the "maybe one day" category. But after learning about how small the RISC-V instruction set is (less than 50 apparently, but I can't find a citation for that anywhere), I'm far more motivated to get into it.

Check out MSP430 is you want small instruction sets, also fits on one page if needed.

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#17
post #12
post #4

When can I buy an affordable, complete RISC-V computer? I've been long planning to cook my own with FPGA but it seems like soon we'll start getting affordable RISC-V CPUs with other utility support?

With QEMU you can already do amazing things. Every component required by Linux From Scratch has been stable, and you can get a Fedora/Debian image for that as well.

Same with FreeBSD.

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#18
post #4

When can I buy an affordable, complete RISC-V computer? I've been long planning to cook my own with FPGA but it seems like soon we'll start getting affordable RISC-V CPUs with other utility support?

Some progress reported a few months back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17642872

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#19
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are none yet. RISC-V is likely to appear in embedded and mobile devices before a full desktop machine is competitive with Intel processors.

Why not embedded? It seems like that would happen well before full desktop machines and competitive speeds.

Er.. that's exactly what he said in the post you replied to.

Re: SiFive Introduces 7 Series RISC-V Cores with E7, S7 and the U7 Series

#20

I've only had a passing interest in learning assembly. It's always been in the "maybe one day" category. But after learning about how small the RISC-V instruction set is (less than 50 apparently, but I can't find a citation for that anywhere), I'm far more motivated to get into it.

I recommend the 6502[1] if you're just starting. What you learn applies almost everywhere, and it's very much a what-you-write-is-what-happens sort of processor. No branch prediction, no caches, no fancy features. Its op-set is very small and highly expressive. They still make them, in fact.

That said, whether you choose to start with it or RISC-V, from personal experience SiFive's implementations are phenomenal. I used one of their free-implementations, and I was blown away by how easy it was to use their automated tools to build a core exactly the way I wanted. Not as easy as generating a NIOS core, but much more capable. With an Artix-7, I had a very capable low-range processor in about an hour.

[1]: https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/

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