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Thread: My custom ASIC KianV SV32 SoC is now

15 Discord messages from 📐 - Designing/📝-project-template/threads/my-custom-asic-kianv-sv32-soc-is-now.md.

Category: 📐 - Designing Parent channel: #📝-project-template Thread ID: 1440762626924609678

Messages: 15

message-1440765608374435941

2025-11-19T18:08:09.167+00:00 — BreakingTaps (@polyfractal)

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Content

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message-1440765612036194304

2025-11-19T18:08:10.04+00:00 — BreakingTaps (@polyfractal)

Content

Super cool!

Newbie question: why is the sdram exposed via pins? to allow loading the memory/program externally directly instead of over something like uart?

also what are the 20 some "blocks" in the image?
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message-1440769048173609193

2025-11-19T18:21:49.279+00:00 — asic destroyer (@logic_destroyer)

Content

Great questions — SDRAM is external because this process node doesn’t offer large embedded DRAM, only small SRAM blocks.To run Linux you need external memory.
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message-1440769812212088862

2025-11-19T18:24:51.44+00:00 — BreakingTaps (@polyfractal)

Content

oooh right, makes sense!
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message-1440773974861811955

2025-11-19T18:41:23.893+00:00 — Tholin (@tholin)

Content

What kinda SDRAM can run at 5V?
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message-1440777195160080486

2025-11-19T18:54:11.672+00:00 — Leo Moser (mole99) (@mole99)

Content

It runs at 3.3V with 20MHz 👌
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message-1440777386143780864

2025-11-19T18:54:57.206+00:00 — Tholin (@tholin)

Content

How much RAM is required to boot mainline Linux? Like, at minimum?
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message-1440777488920871042

2025-11-19T18:55:21.71+00:00 — Tholin (@tholin)

Content

I’ve done it with as little as 16MiB, booting to busybox with 12MiB free. So could maybe do 8MiB.
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message-1440783762278318130

2025-11-19T19:20:17.395+00:00 — Tholin (@tholin)

Content

1Mx16 Dynamic RAM with 5V power supply:
https://www.issi.com/ww/pdf/41C16100.pdf
4 of these and you get your 8MiB for busybox on mainline Linux at a much higher clockspeed
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message-1440783947498917888

2025-11-19T19:21:01.555+00:00 — Tholin (@tholin)

Content

I highly doubt 20MHz at 3.3V is realistic without wait states. My own testing put the switching speed of the GPIOs at 12.5MHz at 3.3V.

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message-1440799299255537728

2025-11-19T20:22:01.699+00:00 — asic destroyer (@logic_destroyer)

Content

I mean, I did build the Tiny Tapeout Micro Linux SoC. With that thing I could boot Linux with just 8 MB. The SoC should support IPv6 and IPv4 and be comfortable to use — not just boot BusyBox and call it a day. I want to do more with it: MicroPython, C++, NFS, all kinds of stuff.
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message-1440801610295939204

2025-11-19T20:31:12.694+00:00 — Tholin (@tholin)

Content

BusyBox + Lua is a decent setup for me on embedded
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message-1440801641153560767

2025-11-19T20:31:20.051+00:00 — Tholin (@tholin)

Content

(I strongly dislike python)
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message-1440801943663673424

2025-11-19T20:32:32.175+00:00 — asic destroyer (@logic_destroyer)

Content

K
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message-1440804457318191154

2025-11-19T20:42:31.477+00:00 — Tholin (@tholin)

Content

But yeah, this project might be more interesting once we have a native 3.3V SCL and 3.3V IO pad structures.

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