CPU loyalty?

Bas Wijnen wijnen at debian.org
Wed Jun 8 02:33:11 EDT 2011


Op 08-06-11 05:31, Jane Andreas schreef:
>>> So it seems to me it is more of a "just happened to work" decision than a "we as qi-hardware stand behind and support the product." It's shocking to hear that MIPS has patents, I would think that disqualifies it from the copyleft definition. 

Indeed. The only reason it's in there is that Wolfgang bought the rights
to a working product, which contained it. AFAIK the idea is to move away
from it to the MilkyMist CPU, but it may take some time before that is
really possible. Still, switching CPU in the mean time may not be worth
the trouble, given that the other one will also be imperfect in terms of
freedom.

>>> So all that being said, is it possible that the Ya Nanonote will not use a MIPS CPU at all? Or is that pretty much set in place? I have not heard of many architectures, but maybe there is a better one? I trust though that Qi-hardware has prbably done way more research than I have. Maybe there will never be a perfect cpu for free as in freedom usage. In that case, it would be useless to want one... 

AFAIK there are 3 options:
- Keep this CPU, wait longer for MM.
- Use newer Ingenic CPU, wait longer for MM but with more features.
- Use MM.

Whether the latter is possible depends mostly on how long it takes to
finalize the Ya. If that takes really long (and it looks like it does),
MM may be ready (and cheap) enough to use.

Thanks,
Bas




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