Discussion

Dabao Evaluation Board for Baochip-1x

bunnie: 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.

mijoharas: Cool project. Why is it called the Baochip/Dabao?Is it big Bao? Or take-away (just learnt the second meaning), or something else?

K0balt: Very cool! So there’s 5x riscV cores available?

bunnie: 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.

bunnie: 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.

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

bArray: > 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?

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