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.
Opal Kelly Brain-1

Brain-1 Syzygy Open Dev Board Hits Crowd Supply

Opal Kelly has launched a crowdfunding campaign to produce a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) development board, Brain-1, featuring its Syzygy open standard for high-performance peripheral connectivity. Designed to coexist with existing interconnection standards including PMOD and FMC, Syzygy is claimed to be entirely vendor-agnostic and compatible with products from… Read More

CRU: RISC-V, OpenRISC, LoRaWAN, and More

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has received a proposal for a cross-vendor standard designed to offer a solid and secure mechanism for updating the firmware of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the field. Written by Arm engineers Brendan Moran, Milosch Meriac, and Hannes Tschofenig, the draft – titled… Read More
Analog Bits Products

Analog Bits Joins SiFive’s DesignShare Platform

Open silicon specialist SiFive has announced another win for its DesignShare platform with Analog Bits, provider of low-power mixed signal intellectual property, adding its precision clocking macros into the mix. Designed to make it simpler for start-ups to build custom silicon by bringing together as much of the IP required… Read More
Broadcom Radio Module

Broadcom Offers £98.8 Billion to Acquire Qualcomm

Broadcom has issued an offer to buy rival chip maker Qualcomm in a deal valued at nearly £100 billion – to include NXP Semiconductor, should Qualcomm’s own acquisition go through – further shrinking the embedded and communications chip markets. Following ongoing legal battles with Apple, Qualcomm’s largest customer, and reports… Read More
LoRaWAN Display

LoRa Alliance Releases LoRaWAN 1.1 Standard

The LoRa Alliance, responsible for the LoRaWAN long-range low-power wireless network standard, has announced the release of a new revision which brings with it support for global roaming. Announced during the All Members meeting in China, the LoRaWAN 1.1 standard brings support for global handover roaming, Class B, and security… Read More
Arm Mbed, The Things Network LoRaWAN Webinar

Arm Announces Mbed, Things Network LoRaWAN webinar

Arm’s Mbed division has announced a webinar offering a getting started guide to using the LoRaWAN long-range low-power radio standard via The Things Network, scheduled for the 29th of November. Hosted by Jan Jongboom and Johan Stokking, the principle applications engineer and developer evangelist for Internet of Things (IoT) at… Read More
Flex Logix eFPGA

SiFive adds Flex Logix eFPGAs to DesignShare

RISC-V pioneer SiFive has announced that Flex Logix is adding its EFLX embedded field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to the DesignShare platform, adding yet another string to the ecosystem’s system-on-chip (SoC) design bow. “There is a critical need in the chip industry to provide a faster, cheaper way for innovative companies… Read More