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.

Microsemi CreativeBoard FPGA development board

RISC-V Foundation Launches Soft CPU Design Contest

The RISC-V Foundation has announced the launch of a design contest, in partnership with Google, Antmicro, and Microchip, which will see entrants competing to build the smallest and fastest RISC-V soft core implementations on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). One of the biggest benefits of free and open source silicon (FOSSi)… Read More

uConfig Automates the Data Sheet to KiCAD Schematic Workflow

Developer Sébastien Caux has released a tool dubbed uConfig which aims to simplify an often-annoying part of the electronic development process: automated conversion between data sheet pin-out diagrams and KiCAD-compatible schematic symbol objects. Brought to our attention by Hackaday, Sébastien’s uConfig started life as a personal project but has… Read More

Eideticom Ports P2PDMA Offload Patches to RISC-V

Eidetic Communications’ chief technology officer Stephen Bates has announced initial support for peer-to-peer direct memory access (P2PDMA) on the RISC-V instruction set architecture, showing a 2.8GB/s throughput between controllers. Designed to address the bottleneck between high-speed PCI Express (PCIe) devices and the CPU, P2PDMA allows for data transfer to occur… Read More

CRU: FOSSi Growth Scares Arm, Verilator 4.0 Launched, and More

Storage giant Western Digital has published full instructions for building the Gnome Desktop variant of the Fedora Linux distribution for RISC-V, targeting the SiFive HiFive Unleashed development board. As part of Western Digital’s push to ship more than a billion RISC-V cores per year, as it moves away from… Read More

DirtyPCBs Previews DirtyCables, New Editor Software

Dangerous Prototypes’ DirtyPCBs, a popular service for low-cost production of printed circuit boards, is expanding its custom cable offering and making it a dedicated website – called, unsurprisingly, DirtyCables. Originally based on a simple script designed to consolidate internal PCB orders for submission to low-cost manufacturers in China, DirtyPCBs quickly… Read More

Arm Offers Free-as-in-Beer Cortex IP to Combat FOSSi Threat

Cambridge-based processor giant Arm has telegraphed increasing concern regarding the threat from free and open source silicon (FOSSi) cores, offering engineers access to free-as-in-beer Cortex-M intellectual property (IP) in an attempt to keep them within its own ecosystem. That interest in free and open source silicon (FOSSi) has been growing… Read More

A Fernvale Kit in Ground Electronics Housing

Sysmocom Discounts Fernvale Open-Source GSM Development Kits

Sysmocom’s Harald Welte has announced a steep discount on his company’s stock of Fernvale kits, development boards put together by Andrew ‘bunnie’ Huang and Sean ‘Xobs’ Cross for cellular networking projects, dropping the price per kit from €110 to €58.82 (excluding VAT.) Unveiled during a presentation at the 31c3… Read More

Iridium, Amazon Partner on Globe-Spanning Satellite IoT Network

Satellite communications giant Iridium has announced a partnership with Amazon’s Web Services arm to launch a globe-spanning cloud-powered communications network for the Internet of Things (IoT): Iridium CloudConnect. Based on Iridium’s constellation of 66 cross-linked communications satellites, Iridium CloudConnect ties the company’s satellites into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud… Read More

Embecosm's Buildroot RISC-V Patch Set in Action

Embecosm’s Mark Corbin Adds RISC-V Support to Buildroot

Buildroot, a tool for easily generating complete Linux system images for embedded platforms through cross-compilation, has announced official support for the open RISC-V instruction set architecture following the merging of a patch set by Embecosm’s Mark Corbin. Merged into the Buildroot source this weekend, as confirmed on the project’s… Read More

Western Digital's Fedora on RISC-V Demonstration

Western Digital Releases Fedora Desktop on RISC-V Tutorial

Wilson Snyder Officially Launches Verilator 4.0 at ORConf 2018

Project maintainer Wilson Snyder formally announced Verilator 4.0 at the ORConf open silicon event this weekend, following a month’s beta-testing of the popular Verilog hardware description language (HDL) simulator. Originally developed in 1994 by a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Core Logic Group team led by Paul Wasson for the conversion… Read More

Ground Electronics' SiFive HiFive Unleashed Case

CRU: RISC-V Hits Consumer Products, GSM Freed, Festival of Maintenance, and More

Huami, a subsidiary of Chinese electronics specialist Xiaomi, has announced a new family of smartwatches and fitness wearables, and in doing so is set to become the first company to bring a product based on the open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) to the consumer market. Announced by Huami at… Read More