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.

Public Review Period Opens for Proposed RISC-V Scalar Cryptography Extensions

The RISC-V Cryptography Extensions Task Group has opened a public review period on a raft of instruction set extensions, ahead of their planned adoption as official standards – including instructions for AES encryption and decryption and the SM3 hash and SM4 block cipher. “This specification has been developed by the… Read More

European Commission Report Declares Open Source Software and Hardware to be a “Public Good”

A team in the Future Networks arm of the European Commission has released a report on the impact of open source software and hardware on a series of areas of the European Union’s economy – and formally identifies it as a “public good.” “The objective of the study was to… Read More

Wavious Releases a RISC-V LPDDR4x/5 PHY as an Apache-Licensed Open-Source Project

Wavious, a fabless semiconductor company which offers a platform based on mix-and-match “chiplets,” has launched a RISC-V-powered open-source LPDDR4x/5 PHY – under the permissive Apache 2.0 licence. “We are strong believers in open-source hardware and software,” the company said in its announcement, “and Wavious is dedicated to making significant contributions… Read More

LibreCellular Aims to Simplify Building LTE Networks with Open-Source

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE LibreCellular Aims to Simplify Building LTE Networks with Open-Source. Halifax, UK, 27th May 2021 – Open-source and technical communities consultancy AB Open is proud to announce the launch of the LibreCellular project, which will provide an end-to-end open-source technology stack for 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular… Read More

CHIPS Alliance, Efabless Announce MPW-TWO Shuttle for More Free FOSSi Chips

CHIPS Alliance and Efabless have announced the launch of MPW-TWO, the second shuttle in the Open MPW programme – offering a second opportunity for free and open source silicon projects to see their designs manufactured. “MPW-TWO is the second Open MPW Shuttle providing fabrication for fully open-source projects using the… Read More

RISC-V International Launches Development Board Giveaway

RISC-V International, a non-profit which aims to further develop and promote the use of the free and open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture, has announced a giveaway: Members can apply now to receive a free RISC-V development board with up to 16GB of RAM. “RISC-V is now being engineered into everything… Read More

Open Source FPGA Foundation Launches to “Democratise and Promote” FPGA Tech

The cause of free and open source silicon gained a new ally this week with the launch of the Open Source FPGA Foundation, which aims to promote open source tools and methodology in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Founded by members from industry and academia, including board members from the… Read More

Antmicro Adds an LPDDR4 PHY to Enjoy Digital’s LiteDRAM, Releases Test Board

Free and open-source silicon pioneer Antmicro has added a low-power DDR4 (LPDDR4) PHY to Enjoy Digital’s open LiteDRAM project, and has released an open-hardware test board trying it out on a Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA. “This [adds] support for LPDDR4 PHYs in LiteDRAM,” Antmicro’s Jędrzej Boczar wrote of the original pull… Read More

Nokia Bell Labs Transfers Plan 9 Copyrights to the Plan 9 Foundation

Nokia Bell Labs has announced it is transferring its copyrights to Plan 9, the distributed operating system which began life at at Bell Labs in the 1980s, to the newly-formed Plan 9 Foundation – which is in turn making the project available under an open source licence. “This OS may… Read More

OpenHW Group, Mitacs Announce £16.2m OpenHW Accelerate Research Funding Programme

OpenHW Group has announced a partnership with fellow not-for-profit Mitacs to launch a £16.2 million multi-year co-funded research programme for free and open-source silicon: OpenHW Accelerate. “OpenHW Group is transforming how the industry adopts open-source hardware and is bringing relevant research projects to leading industry and academic institutions worldwide,” says… Read More

Wave Computing Rebrands to MIPS, Embraces RISC-V For Next-Gen Cores

Wave Computing has emerged from bankruptcy proceedings with the surprise news that it’s taking the name of its MIPS subsidiary and moving to the free and open-source RISC-V ISA for future processor IP. Wave Computing dipped its toes in the free and open-source silicon movement back in… Read More

Osmocom Founder Harald Welte Warns of “Open-Washing” in the Open RAN

Harald Welte, managing director of sysmocom and the founder and lead developer of open-source telecommunications project Osmocom, has written to the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to warn of “open-washing” in the the field – and to suggest ways to combat the problem. There is an increasing move… Read More