[chbot] RISC-V micro-controller.

[hamster]

I got a SiFive HiFive1 RISC-V devboard for Christmas - the hint to
my wife worked. The board I got was an "early access" model of
https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive1/ 

If you want to a little about
the RISC-V architecture have a look at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V - but the summary from Wikipedia is
"The RISC-V authors aim to provide several CPU designs freely available
under a BSD license". It is likely be the next big thing for semi-custom
silicon designs - much like ARM cores but without any of the licensing
issues. 

I spent last night building a new Ubuntu VM, then cloning and
building the GitHub repos for the tool chain. A few hours later it now
says "Hello World" - not much for a micro-controller with 16 MB of
(off-chip) flash, but it is a start. 

It all worked as advertised. As
it is open source all the way down to the micro-controller's HDL there
is now an option for anybody who detests the lack of AVR openness (if
such people exist). It is early days yet so is still a little pricey per
chip. 

I'm thinking of adding an e-ink or TFT display, and making it a
reader for the Gutenberg Bible as a sort of an art/political
statement.... 

Mike 
 
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