world's first Open Source Microprocessor

[ubuntu27]

Like the title says WE ARE GETTING SOMEWHERE!!へへへ　HEHEHE.

Read this article: http://www.ameinfo.com/78676.html

Please comment on anything :)

I know we have to get some juice out of this.

[Bandit]

I like Sun's new way of thinking :)

[simon_is_learning]

http://www.opencores.org/

there is a whole community that is supporting open source microprocessors.

After what I have understood reading an article, the Sun-processor is using a smarter treading system (coolthread) and therefore gets more done in one cycle. So the processor is more energy efficiant.

Hopefully the technique will apear in laptops and similar.

[earobinson]

looks pretty cool to me :)

[simon_is_learning]

I wonder if it will come an Ubuntu flavor for T1 processors

[curuxz]

Seems a great marketing trick, the processors are open so people will go for them, and in turn have to buy the systems they go in, and the software that runs on them.

Sun is a very cool company when it comes to using opensource mixed with propritory to win business. I say fair play to em! ;)

[commodore]

curuxz: I don't think normal people buy it because it's open source. They don't even know what open source is. They just want Windows to run on it which it doesn't.

My next comp will be a sparc :D:D
(actually not)

[skirkpatrick]

These cores will mostly be used in embedded systems. You take a core, add some additional logic for your system, and end up with a single-chip solution. You will probably never see these in a desktop or laptop. Maybe cell phones and PDA's.

[Terry of Astoria]

How do you license a processor with the GPL?
Interesting.

[M7S]

Seems a great marketing trick, the processors are open so people will go for them, and in turn have to buy the systems they go in, and the software that runs on them.

Sun is a very cool company when it comes to using opensource mixed with propritory to win business. I say fair play to em! ;)
Sun is planning to open source all their software in approximately two years.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060303173751518

[YourSurrogateGod]

Where do you actually buy a PC with a sparc processor?

[Bragador]

curuxz: I don't think normal people buy it because it's open source. They don't even know what open source is. They just want Windows to run on it which it doesn't.

And this is where you and me come in to explain to them the situation.

Bravo for the news by the way.

[Brunellus]

whoopee. a GPL'd microprocessor. Does anyone have a spare 100 million dollars or so for a chip fabrication plant?

[Sirin]

How the hell does one GPL hardware? :confused:

[YourSurrogateGod]

How the hell does one GPL hardware? :confused:
Make the blueprints available for everyone to reproduce and if someone wants to, they can change it, but have to reveal the changes that they've made.

It's been done with beer, why not CPUs?

[Brunellus]

there are more limited licenses for this sort of thing available. Transmeta is/was out of the fabrication business and has tried turning the business into a design shop for microprocessors. So there is a precedent for the licesnsing of IC designs.