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.

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

Plan 9 Foundation Aims to Bring Bell Labs’ Distributed Operating System to a Wider Audience

Plan 9, the distributed operating system which originated at Bell Labs, has received a shot in the arm courtesy of the formation of the Plan 9 Foundation, founded with a view to coordinating development and promoting use of the platform. “We are pleased to announce the creation of the Plan… Read More

Alibaba’s T-Head Releases Full Android 10 Port for RISC-V

T-Head, the semiconductor division of Alibaba, has released the source code for a functional port of Android 10 to the RISC-V architecture – including a guide to getting it up and running in the QEMU emulator. The earliest success in porting the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) version of Android… Read More

Open-Hardware BeagleV, at $149, is the Most Affordable RISC-V Linux Computer Yet

BeagleBoard.org and Seeed Studio, in partnership with StarFive, have opened applications for an open-source, highly-affordable, Linux-capable RISC-V single-board computer: the $149 BeagleV. Launching with an initial pilot production batch in late March to early April, the BeagleV is an open-source single-board computer built around a StarFive system-on-chip implementing SiFIve’s U74… Read More

RISC-V Gets an Early, Minimal Android 10 Port Courtesy of PLCT Lab

PLCT Lab, a group working on compilers, runtimes, and emulators, has announced a milestone for its effort to port the Android Open Source project to the free and open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture: a successful minimal boot, with step-by-step instructions for trying it out yourself. With increasing interest in using… Read More

BBC Picks SiFive’s RISC-V-Powered HiFive Inventor for Doctor Who Coding Push

The BBC has announced a partnership with SiFive to bring RISC-V-powered development to kids around the world with the launch of the BBC Doctor Who HiFive Inventor educational development board and supporting coursework bundle. Announced late last year, the SiFive Learn Inventor is a hand-shaped educational development board inspired… Read More

SHAKTI Announces Third Silicon Success with the Arduino-Compatible Moushik

The SHAKTI free and open source silicon project has reached another milestone with the boot up of the Moushik, an Arduino-compatible system-on-chip (SoC) and the group’s third successful silicon tape-out. The SHAKTI project first announced its success in booting Linux on a home-grown RISC-V based processor back in 2018,… Read More

IBM Contributes Open-Source A2O POWER Core, Open-CE to the OpenPOWER Foundation

The OpenPOWER Foundation has announced two more IBM projects which have been moved to an open-source licence, following on the heels of opening the POWER instruction set architecture (ISA) itself. Announced this week at the OpenPOWER Summit 2020, IBM is contributing a the A2O out-of-order processor core with supporting FPGA… Read More