# Questions

you applied to the 2022-08 open call from NLnet. We have some questions regarding your project proposal Libre-SOC OpenPOWER ISA WG, but obviously we are incurring some delays due to the deluge of payment requests ;)

    You requested a neat round sum of 100000 euro.
    Can you provide some more detail on how you arrived at this amount?
    Could you provide a breakdown of the main tasks, and the
    associated effort? What rates did you use?

last question first: we've learned (painfully, by losing opportunities
and team members) that the prior rates which were around EUR 1500 per
person are inadequate to attract the quality we need, and had to double
it.  I (personally) used to be ok when working out of Taiwan for 3 years
on EUR 1200-1500, and Jacob was in student-subsidised accommodation.

   3 people, at EUR 3,000, is actually only 11 months duration

these are the tasks:

* ongoing communication with OPF ISA WG: over 12-18 months,
  it takes appx 1-2 hours per day of communication time to
  prepare and answer questions.
* preparation (and revision) of RFCs: although they are templatable
  and partial cut/paste from the wiki the revisions are not, needing
  ongoing feedback.  plus, we will need approximately 25 RFCs.
* Compliance Test Suites: there are already thousands of unit tests,
  these need to be expanded for the 8/16/32-bit work (thousands, in
  each bit-width).  Again: several months of work
* Developing and improving the Simulator itself, to confirm correct
  functionality: again, several months (this is always ongoing)
* The Test API: this will be a simpler self-contained task to make
  it auto-generate Makefiles (and cover other systems), and
  also by this time we will have cavatools in the mix: approx 8 weeks
* binutils needs ongoing updates, an estimated budget covering
  10-14 weeks would be good.

    Is there meanwhile news on the requirements of IBM and the ISA WG?

somewhat.  the page is now open - https://openpower.foundation/isarfc/ -
and they have prepared a process/procedure document (legally required
to be followed, under the OPF's ByLaws), which is adapting as we're
literally the first people to use it.



    A request for 100k is very large, and the timelines are pretty long too. Can we not take it step by step? It would be better for us to achieve this incrementally, as in: start with a smaller amount for meeting submission criteria for the block of instructions, deliver initial code, tests, documentation - and when more budget is needed, a new chunk is added.

What would work on the legal compliance for the development look like? Who would be doing that?

How would you manage such a large amount of RFCs, which must be perceived as a denial of service at the WG? Is there infrastructure in place to manage the lifecycle of each RFC? How are discussions going to be linked to each RFC?

What are the timelines? Look forward to hearing from you.