Category: Community

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

RISC-V’s Potential Highlighted in Low Start-up Costs

The benefit of an open instruction set architecture (ISA) like RISC-V have been laid bare in a piece by Stacey Higginbotham which puts the real-world cost of launching your own RISC-V semiconductor company below the cost of simply licensing proprietary intellectual property (IP) from a company like Arm. Following… Read More

Bunnie Huang Makes Case for Open Hardware Consumer Products

Slowing of Moore’s law, virtuous feedback cycle and ecosystem benefits cited among the motivations for making consumer products with designs that anyone can study and modify. In a Business Impact interview for MIT Technology Review Andrew “Bunnie” Huang makes the case for hackable consumer products, noting how “The slowing… Read More

UK Government Publishes “Secure by Design” IoT Policy

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport of the UK Government has published a policy paper on the development and sale of Internet of Things (IoT) devices from a security perspective, dubbed “Secure by Design.” “We want everyone to benefit from the huge potential of internet-connected devices and it… Read More

Solderpad Hardware Licence Gets New Release

Version 2.0 release of Solderpad Hardware Licence is simplified and presented as a wraparound to the Apache 2.0 software license. The Solderpad Hardware Licence is based upon the popular Apache 2.0 software license, which in contrast to simpler permissive software licences such as BSD and MIT, provides greater clarity… Read More

Solving Slot Antenna Issues in High-Frequency PCB Design

Electronics consultant John Dunn has published a piece on accidental slot antennas in printed circuit boards on the EDN Network, showcasing how the same mitigation techniques used in the microwave industry can apply to high-frequency circuit designs. “Way back when, I described how a blundering engineering manager managed to… Read More

Intel Launches AI: In Production Programme for Movidius Devs

Chip giant Intel has announced a programme designed to help developers bring devices with artificial intelligence capabilities – powered by the company’s Movidius Myriad 2 vision processing unit (VPU), naturally – to market more quickly and easily. “Intel AI: In Production means we can expect many more innovative AI-centric products… Read More

GreenWaves Launches RISC-V PULP-based GAP8 AP

GreenWaves Technologies has officially launched GAP8, its RISC-V based low-power application processor for Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Based on the work of the Parallel Ultra Low Power (PULP) project, GAP8 was first shown off as a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) core back in March… Read More

CRU: PULP Launches, RISC-V Fedora, LoRa, and More

The PULP (Parallel Ultra Low Power) Platform, a joint project between ETH Zurich and University of Bologna, had a busy February beginning with the release of the PULPissimo RISC-V microcontroller core, designed to take over from the more basic PULPino. “Today we are happy to announce PULPissimo, a new single-core… Read More

Fedora Releases RISC-V Disk Images, Praises QEMU Patch Set

Support for Linux on the open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) continues to improve, with patches to the QEMU emulator proving stable enough for the Fedora project to build and distribute RISC-V bootable disk images. Announced on the RISC-V software development mailing list late last night by Red Hat’s… Read More

Digi-Key Releases Open KiCad Parts Library

Parts supplier Digi-Key has announced its support for the open-source KiCad printed circuit board (PCB) and schematic design tool with the release of 1,000 common parts in a permissively-licensed library. “With more restrictive licensing or licenses that don’t align with some of our customers’ needs, some users are looking to… Read More

Outernet Claims 71,572km LoRa World Record

Outernet, a project to provide multimedia data bursts via satellite to otherwise disconnected populations, has announced what it believes to be a world record for LoRa communication distances: a 71,572 kilometres round-trip. Designed to provide multimedia content delivery where no traditional infrastructure is available – from less-developed countries through… Read More

PULP Releases 64-bit Linux-Compatible Ariane RISC-V Core IP

The Parallel Ultra Low Power (PULP) Platform project has announced the release of Ariane, a Linux-compatible 64-bit application-class RISC-V core design, published under the permissive Solderpad Hardware Licence. A joint effort between ETH Zurich and the University of Bologna, Ariane marks the pair’s first high-performance application-class RISC-V core intellectual property… Read More