Category: Community

Get the latest news on developments in the wider community and topics including wireless, embedded and open source silicon.

CHIPS Alliance, Efabless Announce MPW-TWO Shuttle for More Free FOSSi Chips

CHIPS Alliance and Efabless have announced the launch of MPW-TWO, the second shuttle in the Open MPW programme – offering a second opportunity for free and open source silicon projects to see their designs manufactured. “MPW-TWO is the second Open MPW Shuttle providing fabrication for fully open-source projects using the… Read More

RISC-V International Launches Development Board Giveaway

RISC-V International, a non-profit which aims to further develop and promote the use of the free and open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture, has announced a giveaway: Members can apply now to receive a free RISC-V development board with up to 16GB of RAM. “RISC-V is now being engineered into everything… Read More

Open Source FPGA Foundation Launches to “Democratise and Promote” FPGA Tech

The cause of free and open source silicon gained a new ally this week with the launch of the Open Source FPGA Foundation, which aims to promote open source tools and methodology in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Founded by members from industry and academia, including board members from the… Read More

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