Tag: FOSSi

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

Efabless’ CLEAR, a Fully-Open RISC-V ASIC Built on chipIgnite, Nears its Goal with Days to Go

CLEAR, a fully-open development board built around a RISC-V embedded-FPGA application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed by Efabless as a showcase of what its chipIgnite platform can offer, is entering the last days of its crowdfunding campaign with just a handful of boards left to reach its goal. “CLEAR is an… Read More

Ten Reasons to use SiliconCompiler – Including SPDX Provenance Support

Zero ASIC’s chief executive Andreas Olofsson has called for “all chip designers” to try out the open-source SiliconCompiler build system, showcasing his top ten reasons for giving it a go – including a provenance feature which supports the Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) standard. “We have been working hard on… Read More

Chip floorplan example, courtesy Mirhoseini et al.

Google Research Releases Circuit Training, an Open-Source Framework for Automated Chip Floorplanning

Google Research has released the source code for a chip floor-plan generate based on deep reinforcement learning – after publishing a paper demonstrating how effective the approach could be in April last year. “Chip floorplanning is the engineering task of designing the physical layout of a computer chip,” the research… Read More

All Invited to the OpenTapeOut Open Source ASIC Design Conference This Weekend

The free and open source silicon community, both established and simply interested, is invited to a new event this weekend: the OpenTapeOut Conference 2021, hosted by Zero to ASIC course creator Matt Venn. “We encourage all of you folks to join us at what we hope will be the start… Read More

Alibaba’s T-Head Releases Four RISC-V Cores Under a Permissive Licence

Alibaba has released the source code for its XuanTie E902, E906, C906, and C910 RISC-V processor cores, promising to follow their release with additional development tools, software development kits, and customisations in the future. Designed by Alibaba’s T-Head semiconductor arm, the XuanTie C906 was launched as a low-power in-order core… Read More

Open-Source Hardware Will Deliver a “Plethora” of New Devices, Researchers Conclude

Frank Hannig and Jürgen Teich, of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen- Nürnberg, have penned their thoughts on open-source hardware in the latest issue of IEEE Computer – concluding it will “pave the way to a plethora of new fantastic electronic devices.” “One of the amazing things about open source is that… Read More

RISC-V Pioneer SiFive Opens its First UK Office, Announces Hiring Push

RISC-V pioneer SiFive has opened its first office in the UK, and promises that staff there will enjoy “location flexibility” as the company looks to expand its presence and grow the RISC-V ecosystem. “I have exciting news to share,” Andrew Frame, formerly of Cambridge-based proprietary chip IP giant Arm, wrote… Read More

Public Review Period Opens for Proposed RISC-V Scalar Cryptography Extensions

The RISC-V Cryptography Extensions Task Group has opened a public review period on a raft of instruction set extensions, ahead of their planned adoption as official standards – including instructions for AES encryption and decryption and the SM3 hash and SM4 block cipher. “This specification has been developed by the… Read More

European Commission Report Declares Open Source Software and Hardware to be a “Public Good”

A team in the Future Networks arm of the European Commission has released a report on the impact of open source software and hardware on a series of areas of the European Union’s economy – and formally identifies it as a “public good.” “The objective of the study was to… Read More

Wavious Releases a RISC-V LPDDR4x/5 PHY as an Apache-Licensed Open-Source Project

Wavious, a fabless semiconductor company which offers a platform based on mix-and-match “chiplets,” has launched a RISC-V-powered open-source LPDDR4x/5 PHY – under the permissive Apache 2.0 licence. “We are strong believers in open-source hardware and software,” the company said in its announcement, “and Wavious is dedicated to making significant contributions… Read More

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