[samsoniuk]

Yeah, I know about it! But unfortunately the 68080 is too large for my FPGA applications, which are cost driven. Other open source 680x0 projects does not work too, by the same reason. For some years, I wondering how create a compact implementation of the 680x0 in the FPGA, but with no success. At some moment I started work in a subset of the 680x0, something like a RISC version of 68000, with a minimal instruction set and a very optimized pipeline, but in this case the problem moved to the toolchain and make the gcc work well is not so easy... Defeated by all that problems and limitations, I started test lots of new architectures and found the RISC-V.

[Annatar]

What about OpenSPARC, since it has low power consumption and can be cut down to less cores and threads?

[samsoniuk]

The available implementation of the OpenSPARC is too complex: a single core with 4 threads requires 59350 LUTs and runs at 62.5MHz in a Virtex FPGA (according to [1], slide 21). Although is possible remove some features, I don't think is possible reduce the logic without impact the compatibility. I think the Leon3 [2] is a far better option for FPGAs, since requires only around 3500 LUTs and runs at 125MHz in a Virtex FPGA. In a low-cost FPGA, the performance of Leon3 is around 66MHz, which is enough to replace the 680x0 and coldfire v2 processors. The requirement for 3500LUTs is not so bad, as long the TG68 (an open source 68000 replacement in VHDL) has similar requirements. However, the typical RISC-V implementation uses less than 1/3 of the logic when compared with Leon3 and TG68. Also, although the RISC-V provides almost the same performance as the Leon3, the extra logic can be used for more parallel RISC-V cores, resulting in a increase of 2 or 3x in the total performance. Finally, there is an additional problem with OpenSPARC, Leon3 and TG68: the GPL license. In another hand, most RISC-V implementations use the BSD license, as long the RISC-V instruction set itself uses the BSD license. Of course, the OpenSPARC, Leon3 and TG68 are implemented that way. There is no obstacle, other than the technical complexity, to prevent develop a new OpenSPARC, Leon3 or TG68 from scratch, with a more firendly license, better performance or better use of the logic. In this case, the question is: how many time you need to implement a minimal viable core with one of that architectures? In the case of RISC-V is perfectly possible implement a small core in a FPGA with the RV32I instruction set in few hours, because the RV32I set of instructions is really very poor and primitive, which make it specially friendly to the hardware and explain why is so compact.

[1] http://ramp.eecs.berkeley.edu/Publications/OpenSPARC%20T1%20... [2] http://ramp.eecs.berkeley.edu/Publications/LEON3%20SPARC%20P...