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.

Initial ORConf 2018 Programme Published

An initial programme for ORConf 2018, the open-source digital design conference to be held in Gdansk, Poland this September, has been published – and there are some big names showing off the state of the art on the schedule. While there are more speakers yet to be announced, the initial… Read More

IBM, Microsoft Release Quantum Computing Education Materials

IBM and Microsoft have begun efforts to develop the next generation of programming talent for the impending era of quantum computing, focusing on gamified core concepts and practical programming katas respectively. Unlike traditional computers, which – with some notable exceptions – use binary bits with an on-off state, quantum computers… Read More

Bootlin Announces Allwinner VPU Driver Completion

Bootlin has announced the delivery of all the main goals from its crowdfunding project to create an upstream-compatible open driver for the popular Allwinner visual processing unit (VPU) hardware found in many embedded designs. Funded via Kickstarter, the campaign by Bootlin engineer Maxime Ripard and intern Paul Kocialkowski saw… Read More

Open-Source KiCad EDA Hits Version 5.0.0

Popular open-source electronic design automation (EDA) package KiCad has hit its milestone 5.0.0 release, described by the team as “a new generation” of the software. “Almost a year after the release of KiCad 4.0.7, the KiCad development team is proud to present a new and improved KiCad 5.0 release,” the… Read More

CRU: RISC-V Security, LoRaWAN Tutorial, Fog Computing, and More

It’s been a busy fortnight for the open silicon, starting with the news that the RISC-V Foundation, the driving force behind the eponymous open processor architecture, has announced the formation of a security standing committee – and is asking for cooperation from the broader industry. “As the number of connected… Read More

Rattled Arm Launches Anti-RISC-V Marketing Campaign

The growing impetus behind the free and open source silicon (FOSSi) RISC-V project appears to have industry incumbents rattled, with Arm launching an aggressive marketing campaign which attempts to sow the seeds of doubt in engineers’ minds about the ISA’s benefits versus Arm’s own proprietary intellectual property (IP). Following the… Read More

OnChip Teases Itsy-Chipsy Call for Participation

Open silicon specialist OnChip has promised to launch a call for participation in its Itsy-Chipsy low-cost semiconductor manufacturing facility, and is already receiving interesting suggestions from potential users. Announced back in April, Itsy-Chipsy aims to allow smaller companies and hobbyists to produce application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for as little… Read More

Renode 1.4 Brings HiFive Unleashed, Freedom E310 Support

Renode, Antmicro’s virtual development tool for multinode embedded networks, has received support for SiFive’s Freedom E310 and HiFive Unleashed development boards. “Renode was created based on many years of experience with the development of software for embedded systems – both for gateways, on-board computers as well as sensor nodes and… Read More

SparkFun Publishes Introductory LoRaWAN Tutorial

Those interested in experimenting with the LoRaWAN long-range low-power standard now have a new resource, in the form of an introductory tutorial by Nick Poole published on SparkFun. Based around SparkFun’s own SparkX Pro RF USB-connected development board, Nick’s detailed tutorial introduces the LoRa and LoRaWAN standards, The Things Network… Read More

RISC-V Foundation Forms Security Standing Committee

The RISC-V Foundation, the driving force behind the eponymous open processor architecture, has announced the formation of a security standing committee – and is asking for cooperation from the broader industry. “As the number of connected devices grows exponentially and new security vulnerabilities like Meltdown and Spectre emerge, it’s become… Read More

IEEE Adopts OpenFog Architecture for 1934 Standard

Standard IEEE 1934, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ first official standard for so-called “fog computing,” has officially received a reference architecture: OpenFog. Sitting somewhere beyond cloud computing, fog computing is a horizontal architecture designed to distribute resources – from computing power to storage – anywhere between the clouds… Read More

CRU: Open Silicon, LoRa Growth, LPWA-CB, and More

RISC-V pioneers OnChip and SiFive have separately announced new microcontroller chip designs, taking aim at the low-power sensor market with their own takes on the open architecture. In a message to social networking service Twitter, OnChip revealed a RISC-V microcontroller design described as having always-on features, three power states… Read More