Lagarto, the processor developed entirely in Barcelona based on RISC-V

When we talk about processors, we are talking about Chinese or American companies, usually. But the surprise has come with Lagarto, a 4-millimeter-square processor developed by 30 researchers. The differential factor of this processor is that it has been developed entirely in Spain. Miquel Moretó has coordinated the development team within the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS)

Francesc Moll, who has collaborated in the project, is an Electronic Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). "It is a milestone, the first chip designed entirely in Barcelona," said Moll. He also highlighted that Lagarto "is relatively simple" and of which, at the moment, 100 units have been developed. Moll has indicated that "it is the beginning of a long journey that will lead us to make more powerful and complex processors"

Lagarto, a processor entirely developed in Barcelona

BSC-CNS indicates that it is a strategic bet and that it offers a great opportunity thanks to the free RISC-V hardware architecture. The Director of the BSC-CNS, Mateo Valero has indicated that “until now we have always depended on the hardware owners. Since we do not have access to the hardware instructions, we cannot modify it or know what is there. They may be controlling us, sending information about what we do, without us knowing. But with RISC-V, which is comparable to what Linux represented for software, this is going to change "

Note that the European Union two years ago already indicated that the lack of hardware was a great vulnerability. Relying too heavily on American chips poses a risk of industrial espionage, economic boycotts and security breaches in the military field. It was then that the BSC-CNS was commissioned to release the scientific development of European chips. The aim was to obtain technology sovereignty and maintain European competitiveness.

Mateo Valero knew that two former doctorates with whom he had collaborated were developing Lagarto at the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico. Marco Antonio Ramírez (no, it's not our Marco, the name is a coincidence) and Luis Alfredo Villa were the ones who worked at Lagarto.

Valero proposed that they change the MIPS architecture for the RISC-V, since free hardware is the future. He also proposed redefining the project and moving it to Barcelona to redefine the project. Lagarto also only aimed to teach computer architecture to students. Now the Lagarto de Barcelona version is a chip capable of running software.

Free hardware based processor

The project sought to develop a simple chip, to later create something more sophisticated. “It is still a very complex system, in which many different types of knowledge intervene and for which a multidisciplinary team is needed. For all of us, it was the first project of this complexity that we were tackling, ”says Moll. "We didn't know what would work and what wouldn't," Moretó admits.

An innovative project with a deadline for submission. In addition to the difficulties of development, there is no foundry in Spain capable of producing Lagarto. So the designs were searched and finally sent to TSMC, the Taiwanese foundry. “They did not intervene in the design of the chip. They limited themselves to executing the extremely detailed instructions that we sent them ”, comments Lluís Terés from the National Microelectronics Center, which coordinated the physical design of the chip.

"It was crazy; we were changing things until the delivery day ”, comments Terés. Until late spring, no one knew for sure how Lagarto would work. It was not until the end of September that the order made to TSMC arrived. When they had the package, everyone got together and the unboxing of the chips began.

Terés indicates that "it was a very exciting moment." At this point they took Lagarto and inserted it into a motherboard that they had developed for the first East. “I thought that some parts of the chip would work; about other parts they had many doubts ”. When they began the testing process “there was an explosion of joy. It worked exceeding our best expectations.

Lizard at the moment is not ready to be used in computers and electronic devices. It is just an experimental solution. Moretó indicates that “it has helped us to learn. To go to the moon, one must first learn to launch rockets. This would be our first rocket "

In January they start the development of DRAC

We can say that Lagarto has been a real success and in January the design of a second more advanced chip will begin. The Department of Business and Connection of the Generalitat will finance the DRAC project, a processor for a specific purpose. They will develop three different chips over the next three years for personalized medicine, cryptography and autonomous vehicle navigation.

BSC-CNS in parallel has started the manufacturing process of another chip with EU funding. This chip would be incorporated in MareNostrum 5 and other machines of the European Supercomputing Network from 2023.

The medium-term goal is to manufacture different chips for different tasks based on the RISC-V architecture. The aim is to stop Europe from being technologically dependent on the United States. "Closed source hardware has the potential to enslave us," Mateo Valero states bluntly. "The future of our societies depends on how we develop open source hardware"

Source: LV