News from the FOSSi Foundation

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ORConf is back! We've returned with yet another open source chip design tour de force courtesy of the brilliant community, our first since the previous outing in Bordeaux in 2019. The years have been kind, it seems to us all; with much progress to be presented and discussed over the three days being hosted by the University of Applied Sciences in beautiful Munich.

Pragmatic Semiconductor, best known for its work in making flexible yet fully-functional microprocessors, has announced that it is working towards the goal of "democratising IC design" - and is working towards making its platform compatible with the OpenLane automated design flow.

The FOSSi Foundation is happy to introduce our Google Summer of Code Class of 2023 projects. This year we are grateful that we have been granted six slots by Google to support projects and students. We are thankful for all mentors who volunteered to supervise students, and we’re looking forward to a great summer working together on Free and Open Source Silicon projects.

Just two months remain until the return of ORConf! ORConf, the leading conference focused on open source silicon design, electronic design automation (EDA) tools, and the wider community, will take place in Munich on the 15th to the 17th of September. Coinciding with the first weekend of Oktoberfest, hotel prices are rising, so we encourage you to plan your trip now. It will definitely be a worthwhile experience!

The FOSSi Foundation is happy to introduce our Google Summer of Code Class of 2023 projects. This year we are grateful that we have been granted six slots by Google to support projects and students. We are thankful for all mentors who volunteered to supervise students, and we're looking forward to a great summer working together on Free and Open Source Silicon projects.

Hardware verification can be as rewarding as a treasure hunt. Or as tedious as doing your tax returns. With cocotb, the Python-based verification framework, engineers can enjoy more of the treasure hunt experience. And today this experience is turning 10!

The OpenTitan project, created by lowRISC as a fully-open silicon root of trust (RoT), has reached a significant milestone: the full feature freeze of its register transfer level (RTL) design.

That was fun! Exhausting, but fun. I'm of course talking about Latch-Up in Santa Barbara, our first conference since ORConf in 2019. Having organized open source silicon conferences since 2012, I pretty much knew what we were getting into, but at some level I had forgotten exactly how much work it really is.

We have once again been selected as a mentor organisation for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2023. Google Summer of Code is an excellent program for new open-source contributors to receive a stipend (generously provided by Google) to contribute to open source projects in the FOSSi community. As an organisation, we encompass a variety of community projects in the space of open source silicon design, EDA tools, and the surrounding ecosystem.

We have once again been selected as a mentor organisation for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2023. Google Summer of Code is an excellent program for new open-source contributors to receive a stipend (generously provided by Google) to contribute to open source projects in the FOSSi community. As an organisation, we encompass a variety of community projects in the space of open source silicon design, EDA tools, and the surrounding ecosystem.

The FOSSi Foundation is proud to announce the first batch of speakers confirmed for Latch-Up 2023, our conference dedicated to free and open-source silicon - taking place this year in sunny Santa Barbara, California, USA.

The FOSSi Foundation is very pleased to announce that Latch-Up will go ahead in 2023! This marks a triumphant return to in-person conferences, with Latch-Up being the Stateside franchise of our ever-popular FOSSi Foundation conference series, which we've put on since 2011.

We announced in ECL 57 our North American open source silicon conference "Latch-Up" will return in 2023. And it will be joined by another edition of ORConf!

The FOSSi Foundation is proud to announce Latch-Up, a conference dedicated to free and open source silicon, to be held over the weekend of Friday, March 31 to Sunday, April 2, 2023 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.

Effective immediately, LibreCores, the community hub and IP core directory site is closing its virtual doors.

Effective immediately, LibreCores, the community hub and IP core directory site is closing its virtual doors.

Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) has been a massive success. There's no doubt about that. For the first time it showed the chip industry the benefits of having a common framework. You can hire directly for UVM skills. Vendors provide UVM models for interfacing their IP. There are tools for generating UVM registers and other boilerplate code. There is training available and forums for asking UVM-related questions.

The cocotb project. the Python-based coroutine cosimulation test bench hardware verification framework, is proud to announce the immediate of cocotb version 1.7.0.

The FOSSi Foundation is happy to introduce our Google Summer of Code Class of 2022 projects. This year we are grateful that we have been granted ten slots by Google to support projects and students. We are thankful for all mentors who volunteered to supervise students, and we're looking forward to a great summer working together on Free and Open Source Silicon projects.

The Google-funded OpenMPW programme, launched in partnership with silicon fab SkyWater Technology and silicon design platform Efabless, is enjoying a boom with the announcement of two major expansions: the addition of a 90nm process node at SkyWater and a new 180nm production design kit (PDK) from GlobalFoundries.

Google developer programmes engineer Johan Euphrosine and colleagues have been working on making silicon design tools more accessible, by putting them in the cloud as Jupyter notebooks accessible on Google Colab.

Google, as part of its partnership with Efabless and Skywater Technologies on the Open MPW program which allows free and open source silicon projects to submit chip designs for physical fabrication at no cost, has launched a new resource portal aimed at getting people started designing their own chips.

The first formal releases of the RISC-V Profiles specification, v0.5 and v0.6, have been published - but its authors warn that it is "for discussion only," and "is likely to change substantially" between now and official standardisation.

Machine learning researcher Hugh Perkins is working on a project to create an open-source graphics processing unit (GPU), with a view to being able to produce a physical chip suitable for acceleration of machine-learning workloads.

We have once again been selected as a mentor organisation for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2022. Google Summer of Code is an excellent program for new open-source contributors to receive a stipend (generously provided by Google) to contribute to open source projects in the FOSSi community. As an organisation, we encompass a variety of community projects in the space of open source silicon design, EDA tools, and the surrounding ecosystem.

The CHIPS Alliance has announced the formation of the FOSS Flow For FPGA Workgroup, also known as F4PGA, through which it aims to drive open-source tooling, intellectual properties, and research efforts focused on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

The cocotb project is proud to announce the immediate release of its new version 1.6.0. cocotb is a COroutine based COsimulation TestBench environment for verifying VHDL/Verilog RTL using Python.

As summer comes to an end, we have also completed this year's iteration of Google Summer of Code (GSoC). We at FOSSi Foundation are delighted to say that all of our students this summer successfully completed their projects. For multiple years now, FOSSi Foundation has acted as an umbrella organization for GSoC projects and this year we were particularly excited to have eleven students receiving mentorship from our community. All projects were mentored by trusted community members, including seven first-time FOSSi GSoC mentors, and we are extremely happy with how well the projects went! We owe a big thank you to all students and mentors: Thanks to you, the free and open source silicon ecosystem is in a better place than before. Below is a collection of links to our students' final project blog posts. Please have a read and join us in congratulating them on such a successful summer! We hope to see you all again for next year's GSoC.

The Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation is happy to announce today that Jonathan Balkind is joining the board of directors.

The FOSSi Foundation is happy to introduce our Google Summer of Code Class of 2021 projects. This year we are grateful that we have been granted eleven slots by Google to support projects and students. We are thankful for all mentors who volunteered to supervise students, and we're looking forward to a great summer working together on Free and Open Source Silicon projects.

The cocotb project is proud to announce the release of its new version 1.5.0. cocotb is a COroutine based COsimulation TestBench environment for verifying VHDL/Verilog RTL using Python.

We are delighted to announce that we have once again been selected as a mentor organisation for the 2021 edition of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) Google Summer of Code is an excellent program for students to receive a stipend (generously provided by Google) to contribute to open source projects in the FOSSi community. As an organisation, we serve as an umbrella org for projects in the space of open source silicon design, EDA tools, and the surrounding ecosystem.

Only seven months ago, open source chips were a dream of some, and clearly impossible to others. Today we know better. In a joint effort between efabless, Google, and the SkyWater foundry, [everybody got a chance to send an open source chip to fabrication]({% post_url 2020-06-30-skywater-pdk %}). And many did!

The Embench group announces the first full release of its free and open source benchmark suite for IoT class devices. The benchmark suite, comprising 19 real programs, has proved popular across industry and academia since the pre-release version 0.5 was made available in February 2020. The project is developed by an open group, with contributors from companies and universities worldwide. The code is available under a free and open source license on GitHub (see github.com/embench/embench-iot).

Dear Free and Open Source Silicon enthusiasts!

The cocotb project is proud to announce the release of its new version 1.4.0. cocotb is a COroutine based COsimulation TestBench environment for verifying VHDL/Verilog RTL using Python.

Did you ever dream about creating your own chip? I mean, a physical chip. One which you can hold in your hand, and which does exactly what you've designed it to do?

HALIFAX, England, 18th June 2020 - The Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation (FOSSi Foundation) is proud to announce that it has taken over stewardship of the Solderpad Hardware License (SHL), a popular permissive license for open hardware projects that was originally drafted by Andrew Katz, open source legal expert and partner at Moorcrofts LLP.

FOSSi Foundation launches a new event series named FOSSi Dial-up. It consists of monthly online events that features distinctive speakers from the FOSSi community. By dedicating one hour of presentation plus time for questions, it is set up to become the premier event for major announcements and focused in-depth technical content from all areas of the community.

The FOSSi Foundation is happy to announce that we have been granted eight slots by Google to support projects and students for another year's edition of Google Summer of Code. We are thankful for all mentors who volunteered to supervise students, and we're looking forward to a great summer working together on Free and Open Source Silicon projects.

Are you a cocotb user? Then please help out by taking 10 minutes to fill out this year's cocotb user survey. This survey gives the development community important feedback to steer future of cocotb into the right direction for your use case.

Since 2016 the FOSSi Foundation has participated every year in the Google Summer of Code, a Google-sponsored summer internship for students from all over the world. We are honored to be part of GSoC again this year. As in previous years, the FOSSi Foundation acts as an umbrella organization, supporting community members to mentor students in their respective FOSSi-related projects.

A new issue of the FOSSi Foundation's monthly roundup of all things Open Source semiconductor design, El Correo Libre, is out there for all to enjoy. Follow the link for FOSSi-related FOSDEM 2020 video presentations, OpenPower updates and more RISC-V news.

A new issue of the FOSSi Foundation's monthly roundup of all things Open Source semiconductor design, El Correo Libre, is out there for you to induldge in. News about upcoming Latch-up Cambridge, Massachusetts; bigger and better, how Microwatt OpenPOWER Core is Now GHDL Compatible, new uses for SpinalHDL and much more.

The FOSSi Foundation is proud to announce Latch-Up (latchup.io), a conference dedicated to free and open source silicon to be held over the weekend of April 11th and 12th in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

FOSSi Foundation is inviting everyone interested in Free and Open Source Silicon to meet in Istanbul, Turkey, between 13th of March and 15th of March. The event is free to attend, but professional tickets for 250 EUR are available for individuals who are kind enough to donate for the event.

What an exciting summer! We at FOSSi Foundation are happy to announce that all of our Google Summer of Code (GSoC) students this year successfully completed their projects. For multiple years now, FOSSi Foundation acted as umbrella organization for multiple GSoC projects. All projects were mentored by trusted community members, and we're extremely happy how well the projects went! We owe a big thank you to all students and mentors, thanks to you, the free and open source hardware ecosystem is in a better place than before.

This is a guest post by Reshabh Sharma, who worked this summer on a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project under the umbrella of the FOSSi Foundation.

Librecores provides a platform to share projects and ideas, in the area of free and open-source digital hardware design. Librecores CI is a service to provide CI for hardware projects hosted on Librecores to improve user experience and reliability.

It's that time of year again. Following on from the FOSSi Foundation's Latch-Up and WOSH events, ORConf is now less than 3 months away and if you haven't heard, we're hosting it in beautiful Bordeaux, France over the weekend of September 27 to 29.

The FOSSi Foundation's monthly roundup of all things Open Source semiconductor design, including an overview about our Google Summer of Code, can be found here:

Today the OpenHW Group was announced. This is yet another great step for Free and Open Source Silicon. With the rise of RISC-V we have seen some great momentum beyond the processor cores itself. We now see groups growing from and around the RISC-V ecosystem with big players involved. This strongly confirms our story and we look forward to the next months of continuous growth of the FOSSi community.

The Google Summer of Code (GSoC) has started and we are happy to announce that we have seven students working for projects related to FOSSi Foundation:

The FOSSi Foundation announced Latch-Up (latchup.io), earlier this year - its annual North American open source digital design conference in the mold of ORConf.

We are happy and honored to be part of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) again this year. We are a mentoring organization and serve as an umbrella organization for many projects related to open source silicon design, open source EDA tools and the related ecosystem.

The FOSSi Foundation is proud to announce Latch-Up (latchup.io), a conference dedicated to free and open source silicon to be held over the weekend of May 4th and 5th in Portland, Oregon, USA.

ORConf 2018 was a great success, with many fantastic talks, hallway discussions, and valuable insights into other projects. If you couldn't attend, or if you need a refresher on how great the talks were, don't dispair: the videos and slides are now available online!

The FOSSi Foundation's monthly roundup of all things Open Source semiconductor design, including a wrap-up of ORConf 2018, can be found here:

You can find the new issue of our monthly newsletter here:

This year's ORConf is but 8 weeks away and we're pleased to announce that we have another great event lined up for everyone.

You can find the current issue of our monthly newsletter here:

We are happy and honored to be part of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) again this year. We are a mentoring organization and serve as an umbrella organization for many projects related to open source silicon design, open source EDA tools and the related ecosystem.

The FOSSi Foundation is pleased to announce that ORConf 2018 will be held over the weekend of September 21 to 23 in Gdansk, Poland. This year marks the 7th installment of ORConf, and we're very grateful to the Gdansk University of Technology for hosting the event.

We are applying for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) again this year. In the last two years we had the honor to be part of GSoC as an umbrella organization. You find the projects here: 2016, 2017

LibreCores.org is a modern portal for Free and Open Source Silicon (FOSSi). Our aim is that it becomes the entry point to find and promote high quality free and open source digital IP blocks, free and open source platforms and free and open EDA tools. The focus is on user collaboration, for example by recommendations, and providing a simple interface to understand the fitness of a project.

ORConf 2017 came to a close last Sunday, and on behalf of the FOSSi Foundation I'd like to thank all who attended, presented and sponsored the event!

LONDON, UK, 11 August, 2017 - RS Components (RS), the trading brand of Electrocomponents plc (LSE:ECM), the global distributor for engineers, is sponsoring ORConf, an open source digital design and embedded systems conference that covers from the transistor level up to Linux user space and beyond — featuring presentations and discussion on free and open source IP projects, implementations on FPGA and in silicon, verification, EDA tools, licensing and embedded software, to name but a few.

Over the years orconf has grown to be the most prominent conference for open source silicon, and with presentations from some of the most interesting open source silicon projects lined up, this year does not seem to be an exception. Our audience can expect to learn about brand new projects as well as updates from long-running ones.

We are six weeks into Google Summer of Code now and have seen some great progress from our students. The goal of Google Summer of Code is to get students involved in open source communities, which is very valuable for communities of a size like ours.

We are pleased to announce that OSH Park, the purveyors of perfect purple PCBs, have become sponsors of the FOSSi Foundation's activities. We are very grateful for their support and would like to recognize this by listing them on our Sponsors page at the Bronze tier.

We are happy to announce we have six students in this years' Google Summer of Code. We are very grateful to Google to support the students financially to bring the Free and Open Source Silicon community forward.

Two weeks ago we organized an event at TU Munich, Germany, that featured talks around RISC-V, lowRISC and the FOSSi Foundation. It was a great event with very interesting discussions.

We just get the word from Google that FOSSi Foundation has been selected to participate in Google Summer of Code 2017 . Just as last year, we are very happy about this great opportunity to mentor students around the world who want to contribute to FOSSi projects. Last year we had three excellent students who all made great contributions and we look forward to meet new students this year.

Today I visited Hanover to talk at the Tensilica Day 2017. I was invited by the Cadence Academic Network to give some insights into the state of open source processors and FOSSi. The audience was mainly academic and working on application-specific instruction-set processors (ASIP) and hence some thoughts about the open source ecosystem were welcome very much. It was an interesting event and I had some great discussions. Please find my slides here.

The Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation aims to clarify the licensing situation for Free and Open Source Silicon (FOSSi) designs. Licensing of FOSSi is similar to that of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), but the process of making a chip and the industry conditions vary a lot. The following assumes the reader is familiar with the basics of open source licensing, please see our introduction as reference.

The first full year of the FOSSi Foundation is over and looking back on 2016 we are proud about our achievements:

One of our main projects is LibreCores.org, a community portal for open source digital designs.

One of my favourite conferences every year is FOSDEM in Brussels. This year I have the privilige to represent the FOSSi Foundation in the EDA Devroom, organized by our friend Javier Serrano. I'll talk about Digital hardware design: What can we learn from software development – and what not. Join me for a look at processes and tools that make the lifes of developers, both of software and hardware, easier. What can we learn from each other? Where are different approaches needed?

This year we held the LibreCores Student Design Contest for the first time and it was a great success. We received six high quality submissions of open source silicon and its ecosystem from the last year (since October 2015).

The time to get started with digital hardware development has never been better. Tools are more readily available, FPGAs get cheaper and reasonably sized boards can be obtained easily. Yet hardware development looks like a scary place to many developers coming from the software world. Sometimes it's just naming that's different, sometimes it's missing documentation and being lost in choices that make it hard to dive in.

We have just released the first batch of speakers for the upcoming orconf 2016 iin Bologna, Italy on October 7-9. The presentations include new Open Source CPU implementations, formal verification tools and platforms for verification and continous integration.

We host three students this year during Google's Summer of Code. The midterm is over and they are fastly approaching the end of the program. We want to give you a quick update about their progress here.

We are delighted to announce that well-known Open Source evangelist Andrew Back has joined the FOSSi Foundation board of directors.

The FOSSi foundation launches an annual student design contest, which will run for the first time this year. You can find the full announcement here.

The Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation has been accepted as a mentoring organization in Google Summer of Code 2016. We are very happy about this great opportunity to mentor students around the world that want to contribute to FOSSi projects and the FOSSi ecosystem.

We have published and article that discusses open source licenses in general and how licenses apply to FOSSi. Th article will be extended with the ongoing discussion. Licenses are an important topic for the FOSSi Foundation.

After two months months of discussion and planning FOSSi Foundation is making a lot of progress recently. Most importantly we are now officially registered as a Community Interest Company (CIC) in the UK. This is a proper legal body that we have chosen to run an independent, community-based foundation. We are still in the process of opening a bank account which seems to be more complex with our international officers.

Welcome to the Free and Open Source Silicon (short: FOSSi) Foundation. We have officially kicked off during ORCONF 2015 and are currently forming the foundation legally.