Dear community,
Let’s just say I’m a country that wants to create my own CPU only using knowledge/tech/techniques that are in the open and nothing proprietary. When I said CPU, let’s just say something that can run a C program, and eventually the linux kernel.
Is creating one out of publicly accessed knowledge and resources even possible, and how minuscule the tolerance need to be? Is there even a successful open CPU project out there?
I’m asking this because of an anxiety that I have when knowing only several companies in the world know how to create a CPU.
I’m not trying to create the new Core i7 here, just something that can run as well as a raspberry pi. My imagination that a nation/company need to start small and aim small, before exploring other more complex architecture.
If you are truly starting from scratch, shooting for Raspberry Pi performance isn’t starting small, thats a huge goal. It’s a complex chip built on a fairly modern process node (28 nm for the 4B) using the second-best-established architecture.
The reasonable goal to shoot for would be an 8086-like chip, then perhaps something like a K3-II or early Pentium, then slowly work your way up from there.
yeah, comment above really gave me a picture that 16nm is really small
Well that’s about the level that Russia is at after working at it (okay mostly stealing others’ technology) for 50 years.
holy shit
As a matter of fact when looking at their own in country manufactured lithography, they are hoping to make a fab that can hit 350nm by 2030. That’s the equivalent of a pentium II from 30 years ago. The raspberry pi 5 is a 16nm chip.
They had developed much faster chips but those relied on machines that are now under sanctions so they are trying to build their own sad fab.