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Edition 2026-07-12

TECHNOLOGY

RISC‑Based Open‑Source Portable Game Console Designed from Scratch

RISC‑Boy is an open‑source portable game console designed from scratch.

By Hacker News · 104d ago · Source: Hacker News

Full article

RISC‑Boy is an open‑source portable game console designed from scratch. The hardware includes a RISC‑V compatible CPU, a raster graphics pipeline with a display controller, busfabric, memory controllers, UART, GPIO and other peripheral blocks, and a printed circuit board layout created in KiCad. The design targets the iCE40‑HX8k FPGA and is written in synthesisable Verilog 2005, aiming to fit on a LUT4‑based device with 7680 logic elements. A recursive git clone with submodules is required to obtain the HDL and test files. Building the RV32IMC toolchain for software tests involves installing development packages on Ubuntu 20.04, cloning the riscv‑gnu‑toolchain repository and configuring it with the flags --prefix=/opt/riscv --with‑arch=rv32imc --with‑abi=ilp32 --with‑multilib‑generator="rv32i‑ilp32--;rv32ic‑ilp32--;rv32im‑ilp32--;rv32imc‑ilp32--". The processor supports RV32IMC, passes the RISC‑V compliance suite, riscv‑formal verification and additional formal property checks, and includes CSR, exception and vectored external interrupt support. Cloning instructions specify a recursive submodule update for standalone tests. Simulation uses Xilinx ISIM 14.x with makefiles in the scripts folder, and the compliance suite must be checked out separately. PCB images are available, with Rev A compatible with a 4‑layer 5x5 cm prototyping service costing $65 for ten boards; a revised Rev B is planned after gateware and bootloader mature. Synthesis relies on the open‑source Yosys, nextpnr and Project Icestorm toolchain, with experimental support for the ECP5 family and an internal 256 kiB memory variant for the Trellis board. Source files are organized into directories for board, documentation, HDL, busfabric, graphics, hazard5, memory, peripherals, core modules, FPGA wrappers, references, scripts, software and testing.

Source transparency

Publisher
Hacker News
Reliability
high
Published
7/12/2026, 10:00:20 AM
Retrieved
7/12/2026, 10:00:20 AM
Relevance
80%
Confidence
85%
Read original at Hacker News

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