Microwatt floats


When we last visited Microwatt, the little synthesizeable OpenPOWER core that could, we looked at how you could hack instructions in. Or, you can sit back and wait for the PRs from IBM, including now a simple FPU. While this pull request describes its performance in modest terms, impressively it operates exactly the same (and even authentically "fails" the same tests in the same fashion) as the FPU in the POWER9. There is still no (full) supervisor mode, and no vector unit, but Microwatt is now advanced enough to boot a Linux kernel. The possibility of a single-board Microwatt-based system (and fully reprogrammable, too) gets closer every day.

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