Category: OSDDI

With the groundswell of interest in open source digital design in recent years we decided to take the opportunity to chat with some of the key people involved in this fast growing movement, working in association with the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation to produce the Open Source Digital Design Insights (OSDDI) video series.

An Overview of SHAKTI Processor Program

SHAKTI is an open-source processor program based on RISC-V ISA and is an academic initiative started in 2014, by Reconfigurable Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) Group in IIT-Madras. The motivation of the SHAKTI project was to create an open-source processor ecosystem, to increase collaborations between academia and industry. The program aims to include open-source production grade processors, SoCs, and even development boards. Read More

OSDDI: Dr Jeremy Bennett, Embecosm

In the latest episode of Open Source Digital Design Insights we hear from Dr Jeremy Bennett, CEO of Embecosm, on the numerous motivations for open source silicon, its already modestly successful if largely unknown history, through LEON and OpenRISC ASIC manufacture, Embecosm’s own work on the… Read More

OSDDI: Jonathan Balkind, OpenPiton

Back in 2006 Sun Microsystems made the bold move of open sourcing the RTL code for their UltraSPARC T1 processor via the OpenSPARC project. Targeted at data centre applications and with a full configuration featuring 8x cores and 32x hardware threads, the processor was used in Sun and Fujitsu systems,… Read More

OSDDI: Elkim Roa, OnChip UIS

A modern microntroller or system-on-chip is much more than simply a processor and some digital peripherals, typically integrating a selection of analogue IP also. In this latest episode of Open Source Digital Design Insights we speak with Professor Elkim Roa, Head of the OnChip Group at UIS Colombia, who… Read More

OSDDI: Davide Rossi, PULP Platform

The IoT and sensor network focused Parallel Ultra Low Power (PULP) platform is described as a “silicon-proven parallel platform for ultra-low power computing targeting high energy efficiencies”. It is organised in clusters of RISC-V cores that share tightly coupled data memory and comprised of IPs described in SystemVerilog. The… Read More

OSDDI: Clifford Wolf, Yosys

Over the last couple of years the maker movement has seen a significant growth in interest in FPGA development, with a great deal of activity being focused around the Lattice iCE40 platform, thanks in no small part to the availability of a fully open source FPGA toolchain to use with… Read More

OSDDI: lowRISC, Alex Bradbury

lowRISC is a fantastic initiative to build a fully open source, Linux-capable, 64-bit RISC-V based system-on-chip. Not only this, but a SoC design with additional interesting features such as programmable I/O — think along the lines of XMOS devices — and tagged memory. Read More

OSDDI: OpenRISC, Olof Kindgren

The OpenRISC processor has been around for a good number of years and it has found use in a NASA satellite and Samsung digital televisions, to name just two applications. In this instalment of Open Source Digital Design Insights, long time OpenRISC contributor and open source developer, Olof Kindgren, provides… Read More

OSDDI: SHAKTI Processor, IIT Madras

This latest instalment of Open Source Digital Design Insights is once again from interviews filmed back at ORConf 2015 in Geneva, and this time on the RISC-V based SHAKTI processor from IIT Madras. A project that aims to build 6 processor variants that range from microcontroller up to… Read More