HiFive Unleashed in KiCAD

HiFive Unleashed
1

We have some of the initial files done for a port of the SiFive HiFive Unleashed board to KiCAD. The repo is here:

https://github.com/forksand/ki5

Right now it is named “ki5” (ala KiCAD + RISC-V) and we’ll rename the other files so it is clear which are the original upstream files and which are the KiCAD ported files. If someone from SiFive has any input on how they’d like to see this handled, it would be welcome.

It doesn’t have a license yet as we’ll likely use the same license as the upstream board, but I’m not 100% sure what that is, other than “permissive”. Probably BSD.

Happy hacking,

-Jeff

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Bah. You used a version of kicad that is not in debian/stable. I then built 4.0.7 and it still complained ‘eeschema’ was too old.

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Ya, it was built with 5.0rc2. You can still read the files in 4.0.7, even if eeschema complains about loading them. Version 4.0.7 is in Debian backports though, it doesn’t need to be built.

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Btw, another round of work has been committed.

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Kicad 5.0.0~rc2+dfsg1-3 is now in Debian Buster, fwiw.

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FYI, we’re getting the HiFive components into KiCAD’s libraries:

https://github.com/pulls?utf8=✓&q=is%3Apr+author%3Aki5libs

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We’ve finished all the components, footprints, 3d rendering, etc. “Just” the traces remain to be done…

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Ah, I see the old github link is still there. This is the current git repo:

https://code.forksand.com/forksand/ki5/

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This is awesome!
Are you doing this ahead of time in anticipation for the Freedom Unleashed SoC or have you gotten your hands one them?

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We haven’t gotten our hands on any chips. We are doing this to lay the foundation for that future. We also have underway a free software / open source hardware keyboard controller using a Lattice FPGA with the free Icestorm toolchain:

https://code.forksand.com/forksand/wasd-libre

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We have a PCB completed, pics here:

[Album] Open Source Hardware RISC-V PCB clone of HiFive Unleashed in KiCAD - Album on...
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We got the chip disconnected yesterday, now to reball it…

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So are you guys desoldering from the unleashed dev board and then resoldering to your pcb? If so thats nuts. Looks fantastic.
I noticed your github link is no longer available or it’s been made private. Is there another link so I can check it out? I’m learning KiCad atm and this would be a great resource.

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Ya, a bit nuts to desolder it, but not a lot of other options for RISC-V processors that run Linux. :slight_smile: Hopefully there will be a processor available separately someday…

The KiCAD repo is here:

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The CPU has been reballed:

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