# RISC-V 3D GPU / CPU / VPU
+Creating a trustworthy processor for the world.
+
Note: this is a **hybrid** CPU, VPU and GPU. It is not, as many news articles
-are implying, a "dedicated exclusive GPU". The option exists to **create**
+are implying, a "dedicated exclusive GPU". The option exists to *create*
a stand-alone GPU product (contact us if this is a product that you want).
Our primary goal is to design a **complete** all-in-one processor
-(System-on-a-Chip) that happens to include a libre-licensed VPU and GPU.
+(System-on-a-Chip) that happens to include libre-licensed VPU and GPU
+accelerated instructions as part of the actual - main - CPU itself.
-We seek investors, sponsors (whose contributions thanks to NLNet may be tax-deductible), engineers and potential customers, who are
+We seek investors, sponsors (whose contributions thanks to NLNet may be
+tax-deductible), engineers and potential customers, who are
interested, as a first product, in the creation and use of an entirely
libre low-power mobile class system-on-a-chip. Comparative benchmark
performance, pincount and price is the Allwinner A64, except that the
We can look at larger higher-power ASICs either later or, if funding
is made available, immediately.
-Recent applications to NLNet (Oct 2019) are for a test chip in 180nm, 64 bit, single core dual issue, around 300 to 350mhz. This will provide the confidence to go to higher geometries, as well as be a commercially viable embedded product in its own right.
+Recent applications to NLNet (Oct 2019) are for a test chip in 180nm,
+64 bit, single core dual issue, around 300 to 350mhz. This will provide
+the confidence to go to higher geometries, as well as be a commercially
+viable embedded product in its own right.
# Business Objectives
-* the project shall be a hybrid CPU-GPU
-* the project shall be commercial and mass-volume (100 million units
- and above)
-* the project shall be entirely transparent so that end-users will be
- able to trust it
-* the source code shall be available at all times for all components
- for BUSINESS reasons, making development and use of SDKs dead simple
- and aiding and assisting developers AND BUSINESSES in debugging and thus
- hugely saving them money.
-
-Reasoning:
-
-* If the processor is not a hybrid CPU-GPU-VPU, the
- complexity involved in developing a split shared-memory CPU-GPU both
- at a hardware and a software level will be so costly it will jeapordise
- the project.
-* The project is commercial and mass-volume because there are plenty
- of academic designs (none of them reaching production where people
- may benefit), and "Open" designs, created by the Open Hardware
- Community, sadly due to the high cost of producing ASICs, tend to be
- focussed on markets that would have been great about twenty to thirty
- years ago.
-* Transparency is a key business objective. It is a Unique Selling Point
- that the processor is developed in a fashion that, should it be
- independently audited, no opportunity for spying back-door co-processors
- will be found to have "made their way surreptitiously - or overtly -
- into the design". Yes, GCHQ: I know about the conversation you had
- with nCipher (and, to their everlasting credit, that they told you
- to take a hike)
+See [[3d_gpu/business_objectives]]
# Links:
* [NLNet 2019 Milestones](http://bugs.libre-riscv.org/buglist.cgi?columnlist=assigned_to%2Cbug_status%2Cresolution%2Cshort_desc%2Ccf_budget&f1=cf_nlnet_milestone&o1=equals&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&v1=NLnet.2019.02)
* NLNet Project Page <https://nlnet.nl/project/Libre-RISCV/>
* [[nlnet_proposals]]
+* [[llvm]]
# Progress:
+* Jan 2020: New team members, Yehowshua and Michael. Last-minute attendance of FOSDEM2020
* Dec 2019: Second round NLNet questions answered. External Review completed. 6 NLNet proposals accepted (EUR 200,000+)
* Nov 2019: Alternative FP library to Berkeley softfloat developed. NLNet first round questions answered.
* Oct 2019: 3D Standards continued. POWER ISA considered. Open 3D Alliance begins. NLNet funding applications submitted.
# Evaluations
-*[[openpower]]
+* [[openpower]]