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The development
- This Project is an experiment to prove it's possible to
develop a processor in a bazaar-style environment.
- There is no leading or ivory tower (this is not a
"cathedral"). Anyone may join the team and contribute - or even
contribute without officially "joining" in any way. Even those
with limited or no knowledge of CPU development can have
something to contribute.
- The name of the game is Freedom, so our designs are being
developed openly and will be openly distributable under a GNU
GPL-like license, so anyone will be able to (if they have the
funding at least) take our designs and manufacture and sell
their own FCPU or derivative chips, but any changes will have to
be made freely available again.
- We are aware of the extreme ambitiousness of this Project,
but we believe it to be necessary for the continued existence of
free software in a world of increasingly proprietary hardware,
so we will persevere until we are successful.
- Remember, here at the Freedom CPU Project we are not
anti-Intel, anti-Microsoft, or in fact anti-anything. We are
only pro-Freedom!
- Never flame, never respond to flame bait, but please do make
and take constructive criticism.
Schedule
There is no exact schedule. However there are several important
tasks (that we should try to paralellize as much as possible) to
get to the FCPU:
On the hardware side
- Make a Design
- VHDL
- Simulate and debug
- FPGA prototype
- Implement: synthesis and verification
On the software side
- BIOS work
- gcc work
- Linux kernel work
On the administrative side
- Coordination
- Finance: sponsors/donations
- Distribute
If everything works as expected there will be only two things to do
- Enjoy :-)
- Start on the next version.
Every part should documented as much as possible.
temporary webmaster
Last modified: Sun Mar 14 02:07:50 CET 1999
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