Luke Wren

RISCBoy fits on a $65 prototyping board, but nothing above the silicon was borrowed: a custom RISC-V core that passes the official compliance and formal-verification suites, a from-scratch graphics pipeline, and a complete KiCad PCB layout, all written solo in Verilog.

The thread placed the author fast — Wren also built the RP2040's DVI video trick — then produced a bigger reversal: the founder of an open-silicon shuttle service says a version of RISCBoy already got taped out as real hardware. He still doesn't know if it works.