Tag: FOSS

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

Arm Announces Mbed Linux OS for Cortex-A Parts

Arm’s Mbed division has announced a new operating system to sit alongside its existing Mbed OS: Mbed Linux OS, based on the Linux kernel and tools from the Yocto Project. “My goal has been to extend the benefits of Mbed OS to IoT products that use Cortex-A silicon,” explains Arm’s… Read More

uConfig Automates the Data Sheet to KiCAD Schematic Workflow

Developer Sébastien Caux has released a tool dubbed uConfig which aims to simplify an often-annoying part of the electronic development process: automated conversion between data sheet pin-out diagrams and KiCAD-compatible schematic symbol objects. Brought to our attention by Hackaday, Sébastien’s uConfig started life as a personal project but has… Read More

A Fernvale Kit in Ground Electronics Housing

Sysmocom Discounts Fernvale Open-Source GSM Development Kits

Sysmocom’s Harald Welte has announced a steep discount on his company’s stock of Fernvale kits, development boards put together by Andrew ‘bunnie’ Huang and Sean ‘Xobs’ Cross for cellular networking projects, dropping the price per kit from €110 to €58.82 (excluding VAT.) Unveiled during a presentation at the 31c3… Read More

Embecosm's Buildroot RISC-V Patch Set in Action

Embecosm’s Mark Corbin Adds RISC-V Support to Buildroot

Buildroot, a tool for easily generating complete Linux system images for embedded platforms through cross-compilation, has announced official support for the open RISC-V instruction set architecture following the merging of a patch set by Embecosm’s Mark Corbin. Merged into the Buildroot source this weekend, as confirmed on the project’s… Read More

Western Digital's Fedora on RISC-V Demonstration

Western Digital Releases Fedora Desktop on RISC-V Tutorial

Storage giant Western Digital has published full instructions for building the Gnome Desktop variant of the Fedora Linux distribution for RISC-V, targeting the SiFive HiFive Unleashed development board. As part of Western Digital’s push to ship more than a billion RISC-V cores per year, as it moves away from… Read More

Wilson Snyder Officially Launches Verilator 4.0 at ORConf 2018

Project maintainer Wilson Snyder formally announced Verilator 4.0 at the ORConf open silicon event this weekend, following a month’s beta-testing of the popular Verilog hardware description language (HDL) simulator. Originally developed in 1994 by a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Core Logic Group team led by Paul Wasson for the conversion… Read More

Ground Electronics' SiFive HiFive Unleashed Case

CRU: RISC-V Hits Consumer Products, GSM Freed, Festival of Maintenance, and More

Huami, a subsidiary of Chinese electronics specialist Xiaomi, has announced a new family of smartwatches and fitness wearables, and in doing so is set to become the first company to bring a product based on the open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) to the consumer market. Announced by Huami at… Read More

OsmocomBB SDR PHY Project Achieves GSM-on-Any-Frequency Milestone

OsmocomBB SDR PHY, a project to replace the currently-proprietary Layer 1 of the Osmocom GSM mobile baseband stack, has announced a major milestone: unlocking the ability to run a cellular network on any radio frequency, including unlicensed frequencies. The Osmocom project was founded with a laudable goal: to create a… Read More

Intel Promotes Open-Source Firmware Efforts Ahead of OFSC 2018

Computing giant Intel has announced its continued support in favour of open firmwares, having recently announced the release of Intel Slim Bootloader for Internet of Things (IoT) devices ahead of the first Open Source Firmware Conference (OSFC) this week. “The adoption of open source has had a significant impact on… Read More

CRU: Vintage FOSSi, ORConf 2018, Tink Cryptography, and More

Chips4Makers has officially launched a crowdfunding campaign to produce the Retro-uC, an open-silicon microcontroller capable of acting as a Zilog Z80, MOS Technologies 6502, or Motorola M68K microprocessor. “I am delighted to announce that the Retro-uC crowdsupply campaign has now been launched. It has taken a little longer to straighten… Read More

Bootlin Issues Last Funded Allwinner Open-Source Driver Update

Open-source developer Bootlin has announced the end of its funded programme to develop and upstream open-source mainline drivers for the video processing unit (VPU) hardware in Allwinner’s system-on-chip products, but has pledged to continue best-effort development despite having exhausted the crowdfunded budget. Bootlin announced its campaign to fund development of… Read More

Google Releases Open-Source Tink Cryptographic Library

Advertising, search, and computing giant Google has announced the release of a new cross-platform open-source cryptographic library aimed at protecting implementers from common cryptographic mistakes: Tink. “In cryptography, subtle mistakes can have serious consequences, and understanding how to implement cryptography correctly requires digesting decades’ worth of academic literature. Needless to… Read More