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.

SiFive Unveils Learn Inventor Educational RISC-V Development Board

RISC-V pioneer SiFive has announced the SiFive Learn Inventor, a development board aimed at the education and maker markets which merges the popular BBC micro:bit design with its own HiFive1. Launched via crowdfunding in late 2016, though not shipping in volume until January 2017, the SiFive HiFive1 took its… Read More

Think Silicon to Demonstrate its NEOX|V RISC-V GPGPU at the RISC-V Summit 2019

Think Silicon has announced the development of a general-purpose graphics processor (GPGPU) with 3D acceleration capabilities built on the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) – and claims it will be the first in the industry to demonstrate such a device working, at the RISC-V Summit later this… Read More

CRU: RISC-V for Beginners, Sensors, and Browsers, MIPS Open Closes, and More

Bootlin’s Michael Opdenacker has published a guide to getting started with embedded Linux on RISC-V in just 40 minutes, as part of a presentation given during the Capitole du Libre 2019 event earlier this month. Building on a presentation first given at the Libre Software Meeting 2005, in which… Read More

The Things Network Announces The Things Conference 2020

The Things Network has announced what it promises will be the “world’s largest LoRaWAN event,” The Things Conference, to take place late January 2020 in Amsterdam. Designed for administrators of, users of, and those just interested in the community-driven The Things Network global LoRaWAN initiative as well as the LoRaWAN… Read More

KiCad Open-Source EDA Project Joins The Linux Foundation, CommunityBridge

The KiCad electronic design automation (EDA) project has officially joined the Linux Foundation, a move which its maintainers say will allow it to grow its community and ensure the long-term stability of the project. “KiCad is a set of applications used by engineers focused on board design,” explains Michael Dolan,… Read More

Workshop on Open Source Design Automation (OSDA) 2020 Opens Call for Participation

The Workshop on Open Source Design Automation (OSDA), now on its second year, has announced a call for contributions with a deadline of the 12th of January 2020 – and is, as with the year before, taking place at the Conference on Design, Automation, and Test in Europe (DATE). “There… Read More

Bootlin’s Michael Opdenacker Gets You Started with Embedded Linux on RISC-V in Just 40 Minutes

Wave Computing Shutters MIPS Open Programme with Immediate Effect

Wave Computing has officially shuttered its MIPS Open programme, providing “open use” to selected MIPS core IP and the underlying instruction set architecture, less than a year after the initiative was launched – and with zero advance warning. Wave Computing, which acquired the rights to the proprietary MIPS ISA and… Read More

Intel Unveils Third-Generation “Keem Bay” Movidius VPU for Edge AI

Intel’s Movidius family of vision processing units (VPUs) for artificial intelligence at the edge has a new member, codenamed Keem Bay, which promises a tenfold performance improvement over the previous generation. Brought into Intel’s stable with the acquisition of computer vision startup Movidius in 2016, the Movidius Vision Processing Unit… Read More

BSC Opens the European Laboratory for Open Computer Architecture, LOCA

The Barcelona Supercomputer Centre (BSC) has announced the opening of the European Laboratory for Open Computer Architecture (LOCA), which aims to develop both energy-efficient and high-performance chips based on open instruction set architectures (ISAs). “LOCA will be a collaborative laboratory that welcomes companies, foundations and academic institutions that share the… Read More

Observer Tacks RISC-V Cores to Sensors to Simplify Heterogeneous Aggregation

Olof Kindgren, director of the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation (FOSSi Foundation), has released a tool designed to make multi-sensor aggregation on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) simpler: the RISC-V-powered Observer. “Implementing the logic for sensor communication, post processing and format conversion directly in an FPGA can quickly become very… Read More

European Commission Publishes Final Open Source Beyond 2020 Agenda

The European Commission is to host the Open Source Beyond 2020 workshop on the future of open source hardware and software next week, featuring a panel on the advent of open source hardware and the Internet of Things chaired by the head of the Competitive Electronics Industry DG Connect A3… Read More