Author: Gareth Halfacree

Gareth Halfacree is a technology journalist and technical author best known for his work on the Raspberry Pi User Guide and an upcoming book covering the BBC’s micro:bit project. A keen open source advocate and RISC-V fan, Gareth is responsible for curating our fortnightly community round-up posts.

Wuthering Bytes and OSHCamp Dates Confirmed, as the Call for Participation Opens

The dates for this year’s Wuthering Bytes festival and the Open Source Hardware Camp (OSHCamp) have been announced, with a call for participation now open. This year the Wuthering Bytes festival will be taking place in Hebden Bridge from Friday the 23rd to Saturday the 31st of August… Read More

Wuthering Bytes Returns for its 10-Year Anniversary, and We’d Love You to be Involved

AB Open is proud to announce the return of Wuthering Bytes, the three-day festival celebrating interesting and inspiring technology now celebrating its 10-year anniversary – and we’re looking for participants to run events or give presentations. After global and local conditions caused a three-year hiatus, AB Open is now… Read More

Efabless’ CLEAR, a Fully-Open RISC-V ASIC Built on chipIgnite, Nears its Goal with Days to Go

CLEAR, a fully-open development board built around a RISC-V embedded-FPGA application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed by Efabless as a showcase of what its chipIgnite platform can offer, is entering the last days of its crowdfunding campaign with just a handful of boards left to reach its goal. “CLEAR is an… Read More

Ten Reasons to use SiliconCompiler – Including SPDX Provenance Support

Zero ASIC’s chief executive Andreas Olofsson has called for “all chip designers” to try out the open-source SiliconCompiler build system, showcasing his top ten reasons for giving it a go – including a provenance feature which supports the Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) standard. “We have been working hard on… Read More

Chip floorplan example, courtesy Mirhoseini et al.

Google Research Releases Circuit Training, an Open-Source Framework for Automated Chip Floorplanning

Google Research has released the source code for a chip floor-plan generate based on deep reinforcement learning – after publishing a paper demonstrating how effective the approach could be in April last year. “Chip floorplanning is the engineering task of designing the physical layout of a computer chip,” the research… Read More

Future Corporation Partners with AB Open for Unique RISC-V PC Project

Halifax, UK, 30th November 2021—Open hardware consultancy AB Open has built a unique personal computer based on the free and open source RISC-V instruction set architecture, following a partnership with Future Corporation. Read More

All Invited to the OpenTapeOut Open Source ASIC Design Conference This Weekend

The free and open source silicon community, both established and simply interested, is invited to a new event this weekend: the OpenTapeOut Conference 2021, hosted by Zero to ASIC course creator Matt Venn. “We encourage all of you folks to join us at what we hope will be the start… Read More

Alibaba’s T-Head Releases Four RISC-V Cores Under a Permissive Licence

Alibaba has released the source code for its XuanTie E902, E906, C906, and C910 RISC-V processor cores, promising to follow their release with additional development tools, software development kits, and customisations in the future. Designed by Alibaba’s T-Head semiconductor arm, the XuanTie C906 was launched as a low-power in-order core… Read More

IBM Lowers Barrier to Mainframe Entry with ZD&T Learners Edition Licence

IBM has announced it is making its Z mainframe platform more accessible to those looking to further their skills, launching the Z Development & Test (ZD&T) for Learners Edition – offering a virtualised IBM Z mainframe and a complete software stack for just $120 a year. “ZD&T for Learners Edition… Read More

Open-Source Hardware Will Deliver a “Plethora” of New Devices, Researchers Conclude

Frank Hannig and Jürgen Teich, of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen- Nürnberg, have penned their thoughts on open-source hardware in the latest issue of IEEE Computer – concluding it will “pave the way to a plethora of new fantastic electronic devices.” “One of the amazing things about open source is that… Read More

RISC-V Pioneer SiFive Opens its First UK Office, Announces Hiring Push

RISC-V pioneer SiFive has opened its first office in the UK, and promises that staff there will enjoy “location flexibility” as the company looks to expand its presence and grow the RISC-V ecosystem. “I have exciting news to share,” Andrew Frame, formerly of Cambridge-based proprietary chip IP giant Arm, wrote… Read More

SPDX, the Software Package Data Exchange Specification, Becomes an Official ISO/IEC Standard

The Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) specification, designed to ease tracking, communication, and compliance of provenance, licence, security, and other supply chain matters, has been formally published by ISO/IEC JTC 1 as the ISO/IEC 5962:2021 standard. “SPDX plays an important role in building more trust and transparency in how software… Read More