marty1885 adds initial ET backend to llama.cpp for Esperanto ET-SOC-1

A pull request submitted by AINekko and members of the AIFoundry community introduces an initial backend for the llama.cpp inference engine, enabling support for the Esperanto Technologies ET-SOC-1 processor. The contributor aims to integrate open source hardware into the open source inference ecosystem by upstreaming this development.

The ET-SOC-1 processor was originally created by Esperanto Technologies and later open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license by AINekko. The core RTL is available via the CORE-ET repository, while the SDK and driver are hosted in the et-platform repository. Although the ET-SOC-1 is an older low-power chip with lower absolute performance than modern CPUs, it offers superior performance per watt compared to devices like the ARM R7 7700 development machine.

This contribution facilitates the use of open source hardware for running large language models within the llama.cpp framework.