News

The latest on developments at AB Open and across the wider community.

RISC-V Foundation Announces Security-Focused Soft-Core CPU Contest Winners

The RISC-V Foundation has announced the winners of its RISC-V Soft CPU Contest, launched back in July with a view to promoting security-focused RISC-V implementations. “With the proliferation of connected devices, security is one of the key challenges in hardware design. The free and open RISC-V ISA presents an… Read More

1st CLaaS and Google Summer of Code Work to “Open The Floodgates” of Free and Open Source Silicon

Redwood EDA’s Steve Hoover has written of a Google Summer of Code student who “helped open the floodgates” of free and open source silicon (FOSSi) by contributing to the 1st CLaaS framework project: Ákos Hadnagy. “While [the] open source silicon community is a hotbed of enthusiasm, it is several decades… Read More

Semiconductor Engineering Finds Open ISAs Gaining Traction in Industry

Semiconductor Engineering’s Ann Steffora Mutschler has highlighted the growing popularity of open instruction set architectures (ISAs) like RISC-V and the newly-opened Power ISA, in a piece with input from a range of industry experts. “It’s become so cumbersome to go into building chips because of all these factors,” OpenPOWER processor… Read More

Wireless Broadband, LoRa Alliances Partner on Wi-Fi/LoRaWAN Synergy Investigation

Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) and LoRa Alliance have announced the result of an investigative partnership looking into how Internet of Things (IoT) networks can benefit from a combination of Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN connectivity. The two organisations, both of which champion differing network technologies in unlicensed spectra, collaborated on a white… Read More

Inspur Announces TF2 Open-Source Deep-Learning Engine Framework for FPGAs

High-performance computing (HPC) specialist Inspur has announced the release of TF2, a full-stack framework for efficient artificial intelligence computing on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), under the permissive Apache 2.0 licence. “The deployment of AI applications covers the cloud, the edge, and the mobile end, and has highly diverse requirements. TF2… Read More

CRU: RISC-V Momentum, Carbon Nanotubes, Fire, ICE, and More

RISC-V Foundation chief executive officer Calista Redmond has written of increasing momentum for RISC-V, as the semiconductor industry begins to shift away from proprietary closed-source core. “Interest in RISC-V has been gaining steam with commercial implementations and adoption rapidly growing. It has been incredible to witness how RISC-V has fostered… Read More

OpenPower Foundation, IBM Release Fire and ICE OMI Reference Implementations

IBM has made good on its commitment, through the OpenPOWER Foundation, to release an Open Memory Interface (OMI) under a permissive licence, with the first reference designs for its Fire OMI host and ICE two-port DDR4 OMI device hitting GitHub this month. The OpenPOWER Foundation made the surprising announcement that… Read More

Linux 5.3 Released After Extra RC, Brings Numerous RISC-V Improvements

Linus Torvalds has officially launched Linux 5.3, the latest release of the popular open-source kernel, and it brings with it a range of improvements and new features for the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). “So we’ve had a fairly quiet last week, but I think it was good that we… Read More

MIPI Launches Open Access to Nine Debug and Trace Specifications

The Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance has announced it is providing its debug and trace specifications, nine in total, under open access terms for the first time – including its latest SneakPeek Protocol v2.0. “Opening up access to MIPI debug and trace specifications will foster a more standardised debug… Read More

Antmicro Releases FastVDMA Open-Source Resource-Light DMA Controller

Antmicro has announced the release of FastVDMA, an open-source direct memory access (DMA) controller designed to improve the freedom of FPGA-based free and open source silicon projects. “One of the main motivations leading to the design of an open source DMA controller was the lack of portable open source alternatives… Read More

Calista Redmond Points to Growing Momentum for FOSSi, RISC-V

FOSSi Foundation Details Google Summer of Code 2019 Project Wins

The Free and Open Source Silicon (FOSSi) Foundation has announced the end of its participation in the 2019 Google Summer of Code programme, with seven students contributing to projects under the Foundation’s umbrella mentorship. Run by Google each year as a means of matching students with mentors already in the… Read More