Dear OpenRISC ASIC colleagues,

I think we might have to face the fact that the donation fund is today not enough to produce an gate-array ASIC, which breaks our hearts :-(
We have spent allot of time trying to spread the message around the world, about our intension and goal, talking to product companies, writing articles to different online magazines and to other communities, and of course also in the OpenCores monthly newsletter.
The majority of people that we have spoken with, think that this is a very exciting and cool initiative, so we strongly believe that we have got a chance to raise more money to this project. But the question is - how do we convince and reach this group of people?

Our suggestion is that we put together a design based on the OpenRISC processor and peripherals and implement this design on an FPGA development board (a suggestion posted earlier om the forum). With this first part in place the community can help with the verification and we can prove/show the rest of the world that we are serious about creating an OpenRISC ASIC, by taking the first step.
When people see that we have started the "design work" and that we have a working FPGA design + development board, then we believe it's time to start a second fund in order to raise enough money to produce an ASIC and reach our end-goal.

Any feedback on this is highly welcome.

I vote for. Gradual steps forward are better than walking around.

BTW would you post some links to those articles and announcements?

I too agree for at-least starting of with FPGA prototype, give it out for s/w development, then fine-tune the specs, and re-invest the returns for second prototype..
Adding to same, have plans/time-lines already finalized on ur side regarding design & architecture specs ?

with regards, [pekon]

Hello

A few comments.

1) I'm not sure if it's just me but when I make a donation the PayPal page language is German and I have to use Chrome Translate to understand how to use it.

2) After making a donation the donation amount didn't change so i'm not sure if my money actually reached the project.

3) It may be worth while setting up a OpenRISC ASIC recurring payment/donation option. Perhaps you could call it a group membership or consortium something. It might be easier to plan having recurring income.

Thanks
Jon

the way i see it is that you need an actual purpose - a saleable product - and the rest will follow naturally from there. in the "other" forum i've put in a proposal, which could potentially be put onto kickstarter, where the OR could be used as the embedded controller. if the *actual* chip that happened to be designed *happened* to have a lot more pads which didn't end up being brought out immediately, but could be brought out on other products later, then, well... you made a great saleable product and also made a great stand-alone processor as well.