A̶s̶ ̶f̶a̶r̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶a̶w̶a̶r̶e̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶s̶o̶u̶r̶c̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶i̶g̶n̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶R̶I̶S̶C̶-̶V̶ ̶C̶P̶U̶. While the instruction set of RISC-V itself is unpatented and open source, there's a lot of work that needs to happen between having an instruction set and having a fully designed chip.
Hardware development is roughly broken into 2 stages - front end and back end. Front end is where all of the architectural work happens, and is roughly analogous in software to writing the C code for a program. If you can run it on an FPGA, it means the front-end work is basically complete.
Back-end work is the equivalent of assembler. Except, instead of compiling to a computer architecture, you are compiling to a "process", such as TSMC 7nm. Every process uses different chemistry and physics to work, so backend work strictly cannot be re-used between processes. The wires and gates etc. have different physical properties and just won't work if you use a backend design on the wrong process.
Unlike in programming, the "compilation" process is highly non-trivial. Depending on how much performance optimization you are doing, the back-end work to put this architecture onto say a 7nm process could be tens of millions of dollars. "Compilers" (called place-and-route in hardware) are not very good and need an engineer (or many engineers) babysitting them. And if you want it to go fast, you are going to need to optimize much of it by-hand, which again is highly non trivial.
So even though this repo isn't going to get you a completed chip, it's a really great resource if you want to make your own chip, because it gives you an architecture and a full front end implementation. The front-end is where most people consider the "brains" of a project to be, generally a design shop has its best minds working in front end, and many front end engineers look down on backend work as "grunt work". That said, there are plenty of brilliant people on back end as well, and back end is particularly important and difficult if you are doing something like a wifi chip or bluetooth chip.
Hardware development is roughly broken into 2 stages - front end and back end. Front end is where all of the architectural work happens, and is roughly analogous in software to writing the C code for a program. If you can run it on an FPGA, it means the front-end work is basically complete.
Back-end work is the equivalent of assembler. Except, instead of compiling to a computer architecture, you are compiling to a "process", such as TSMC 7nm. Every process uses different chemistry and physics to work, so backend work strictly cannot be re-used between processes. The wires and gates etc. have different physical properties and just won't work if you use a backend design on the wrong process.
Unlike in programming, the "compilation" process is highly non-trivial. Depending on how much performance optimization you are doing, the back-end work to put this architecture onto say a 7nm process could be tens of millions of dollars. "Compilers" (called place-and-route in hardware) are not very good and need an engineer (or many engineers) babysitting them. And if you want it to go fast, you are going to need to optimize much of it by-hand, which again is highly non trivial.
So even though this repo isn't going to get you a completed chip, it's a really great resource if you want to make your own chip, because it gives you an architecture and a full front end implementation. The front-end is where most people consider the "brains" of a project to be, generally a design shop has its best minds working in front end, and many front end engineers look down on backend work as "grunt work". That said, there are plenty of brilliant people on back end as well, and back end is particularly important and difficult if you are doing something like a wifi chip or bluetooth chip.