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Baochip-1x: What It Is, Why I'm Doing It Now and How It Came About

72 points

by timhh

2 days ago

| past

| 3 comments

| crowdsupply.com

| HN

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bunnie

1 hour ago

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Hello wonderful people! I'm bunnie - just noticed this is on HN. Unfortunately due to timezones I'm about to afk for a bit. I'll check back when I can, and try to answer questions that accumulate here.

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bArray

43 minutes ago

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> Those with a bit of silicon savvy would note that it’s not cheap to produce such a chip, yet, I have not raised a dollar of venture capital. I’m also not independently wealthy. So how is this possible?

What kind of order of magnitude of cost are we talking about?

What are the next steps - is there some service to cut the wafer and put into a package for you?

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mijoharas

1 hour ago

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Cool project. Why is it called the Baochip/Dabao?

Is it big Bao? Or take-away (just learnt the second meaning), or something else?

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bunnie

1 hour ago

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Personally, I love eating "bao" (a style of dumplings), but also coincidentally, a homophone of "bao" in Chinese (different character 保, similar sound) has a meaning of "protect; defend. keep; maintain; preserve. guarantee; ensure". So it means both things to me - one of my favorite foods, and also describes the technology.

"dabao" is just a pun on that - means "take-away" or "to-go". The dabao evaluation board is basically a baochip in a "to-go" package.

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JSR_FDED

1 hour ago

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I think it’s take-away, or to go. Like when you order some food to go.

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gzread

19 minutes ago

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This is about transparency just like the Precursor, right? How can I know that my Baochip-1x is really what it says it is?

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K0balt

1 hour ago

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Very cool! So there’s 5x riscV cores available?

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bunnie

1 hour ago

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Yes, 1x Vexriscv RV32-IMAC + MMU, and 4x PicoRV32's as RV32E-MC for I/O processing, configured with extensions to enable deterministic, real-time bit-banging without having to count clocks.