Kws is working on such a project. He is building a Plan 9 capable Risc-V SoC in an FPGA with the intention of taking that design to RTL then a foundry to put it on silicon, wire bonded and packaged. You can have prototype chips made right now but it's not exactly cheap.
On Mon, May 18, 2026, 12:34 PM Aleksandar Kuktin <[email protected]> wrote: > >On Mon, 18 May 2026 21:29:16 +0900 > >[email protected] wrote: > > If we reach that point, what meaningful agency would remain for the > > user in operating a computer, and would that level of constrained > > control still justify calling it a general-purpose system? > > Formally speaking, that point has been crossed in an absolute sense > sometime around 1990, with the introduction of SMM in 386 and 486 CPUs. > Since the rise of ARM as a major computing platform (ARM always > includes some sort of a "trusted" execution environment), coupled with > IME and it's twin on AMD chips, the point has basically been crossed in > all meaningful ways. > > What's to be done? Well, excepting use of ancient 386 CPUs or building > general-purpose computers with overgrown Z80's, we do have these things > called FPGA chips. Some of them are monsters that have as many logic > gates as the early SoC's from 2010's and can push those gates at or > over 1GHz. There are also more modest FPGAs, and among these you can > find quite a few models that can be used to build a FOSH computer. > Until foundry access becomes democratized, this is the way to go if you > want CONTROL over your computing. > > https://github.com/YosysHQ/nextpnr > > (The relevance of all this to 9fans is that Plan 9 is sufficiently > simple that it might be the best previously-existing OS to port to > these to-be-made FOSH computers. Which reminds me, I need to look into > the Plan 9 VM.) > > -- > Svi moji e-mailovi su kriptografski potpisani. Proverite ih. > All of my e-mails are cryptographically signed. Verify them. > -- > You don't need an AI for a robot uprising. > Humans will do just fine. > -- ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T073a994fa2fd80d1-M3c5062c3921210ef80fee0cb Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
