Re: [oc] SoC bus review

[Rudolf Usselmann <rudi@asics.ws>]

on 1/4/01 21:48, Rainer Dorsch at rainer@rai16.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de
wrote:

> 
> The Leon open source SOC plattform (http://www.leoncenter.com) is using now
> the AMBA bus. Since Jiri carefully selected the SPARC ISA since it does not
> require royalties, I would expect that he checked this also for AMBA before.
> 
> Rainer.

That is true, it does not require royalties, but it does require a license
and is protected by at least one patent. Since AMBA *is* owned by ARM and
there is no true user control, there are no guarantees that the license will
not be revoked or we might face a patent infringement lawsuit.

It is always a tough call to decide on an preferred architecture, be it
ISA or SoC bus. I guess we all try to make the best decisions based on
the information available at any given time. At this point, I see a lot
of opportunity for wishbone, and would prefer to use it instead of AMBA.

rudi