[Libre-soc-dev] Some interesting

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 04:00:33PM -0800, Jacob Lifshay wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 4, 2021, 15:15 Pedro Ângelo <pangelo at void.io> wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > it's me who has to thank everyone here for the fantastic learning
> > experience of
> > seeing both the technical and human aspects of an actual SOC being created
> > from
> > the ground up every day in such a transparent way.
> >
> > Sending back interesting bits of information I find along the way in the
> > rabbit
> > holes I find myself in every time I open this list is the least I can do.
> >
> > Speaking of which, I found this a very interesting read:
> > https://www.devever.net/~hl/omi
> 
> 
> Interesting... maybe if a version of Libre-SOC gains both DDR3/4 and OMI
> support, Libre-SOC could be used as the memory controller for Libre OMI
> implementations, avoiding OMI apparently requiring closed-source firmware.

It raises a question:  what is the boundary between hardware and firmware?
If, for example, the so-called firmware were in read-only memory within the 
D-DIMM so that it could not be changed, would that make it hardware?

Like, for example, the firmware in the old IBM 360's, which had to be 
physically replaced if there was a change.

-- hendrik