36C3 - Linux on Open Source Hardware with Open Source chip design

36c3 intro music
[Filler, please remove ina mara]

Herald: Welcome everybody to our next
talk: Linux on open source hardware with

open source chip design. Who here in the
audience uses Linux? please short sign of

hands, feels like almost 100 percent, I
would say. OK. A hundred percent of people

use Linux. So who have you use it on open
hardware? We are pleased. Another show of

hands. Yeah, that's not too many. Who have
you would like to use it on open hardware?

And I guess that's why you're here. So I'm
glad that we have Drew Fustini here. Our

new speaker. He's a open source hardware
designer and embedded Linux developer and

also the vice president of the Open Source
Software Association. And who better to

tell you how to run your Linux on open
source hardware? Please welcome Drew with

a big, warm round of applause and have fun
with this talk. Thank you very much.

applause
Thank you.

Applause

Drew: I'll skip past my introduction. It's
Congress, so probably most people are

familiar with open source. So before I
jump into what open source hardware is,

just want to frame it in the context. If
people aren't familiar with open source

is. So, examples that are Linux apparently
always running Linux in this room, which

is great. Underneath Android, there's
Linux as well. LibreOffice which I use to

make this presentation is also open
source. Firefox the web browsers open

source. So we're probably all very
familiar with open source software and

open source refers to something that you
can modify and share because the design is

publicly accessible. So with software
we're talking about that you can inspect

and modify and enhance the source code. So
in the terms of, When we talk about open

source, there's a couple different terms
that people use. They might use free or

Libre or open source and those do have
different philosophical backgrounds. For

the purposes of this talk, I'm going to
conflate those terms and I'm just going to

refer to it as open source hardware.
Though some people use the terms free

hardware, libre hardware, open hardware.
But I'm just going to using the term open

source hardware for this talk. So open
source hardware is hardware whose design

is made publicly available so that anyone
can study, modify, distribute, make and

sell that the design or hardware based on
the design. So this is a definition that

we came up with about 10 years ago at an
event called the Open Hardware Summit.

People that were making hardware projects,
we got together and tried to come up with

a definition of what we wanted it to mean.
So I mostly do electronics, though. Open

hardware and open source hardware is more
than just that. It can be mechanical

design, basically any physical object
where you have design files that you could

share. But just to give you an example in
the context of electronics what where

we're talking about is this schematic, the
board layout and then the building

materials, the parts list. And we're not
just talking about an output file like a

PDF or our graphic file of the schematic
or Gerber is for the board layout. We're

talking about editable source file from
the from the CAD software. So something

like Eagle or a KiCAD. And then one of the
things that's good to do with the bill

materials is if you want to enable other
people deal to build your project, it's

good to make sure that the components are
available in low quantity. This isn't a

strict requirement of the definition of
open source hardware, but if you want

people to build a build your project and
it's important to make sure that they can

build it in in low quantities. So many
people have heard of Arduino. OK, good.

Good number of people in the room. So
Arduino was a microcontroller board that

was created at small school in Italy like
over 10 years ago. And it became super

popular because they, it was good enough
at the time to do a lot of different

interactive electronics projects and they
shared the hardware design and the code on

the Internet. And it just kind of achieved
critical mass. A lot of people took it and

modified it for different projects,
different use cases. At the beginning, I

had a link there to the slides. Also, if
you pull up the talk page, there's a link

to the slides as well. I have a lot of
links in these slides. Something that is

interesting as there was a documentary
back when Arduino was starting about the

team. Just went to check out to see what
see what things were like when that was

starting. So one of the most popular
Arduino boards is the UNO, which you see a

picture of there. So how do we know that
the UNO is open source hardware? Well, if

we go to the Arduino Web site, we can see
that the design files from Eagle, which is

the CAD software they use, is there and we
can download that zip file and it has the

schematic and the board layout. Now, when
we're releasing our design files for a

hardware project, we need to choose a
license. And there is a lot of different

options when it comes to licenses. One is
the Creative Commons suite of licenses. So

one common one, you might see people use
that CC-BY means attribution and then

share like essay say. One thing to note is
if you had the noncommercial attribute,

then that makes it not open source. In
this slide there's a link to a good blog

post that kind of explains why if he had
noncommercial clause, it no longer

conforms to the the definition of open
source. Other people use things like copy

left licenses or reciprocal licenses like
GPL and also permissive licenses like

Apache and BSD and MIT. And then there's
licenses that were created specifically

for hardware projects, one of which is the
CERN Open Higher License, which I want to

talk more about specifically. So CERN, the
physics laboratory here in Europe, they

have a open hardware repository. So
they're developing these electronics. And

actually there was two great talks here in
Congress from a couple electronics

engineers that work on the electronics
there. So they're building electronics for

their physics experiments and they want to
share that with other labs around the

world. So they have an open hardware
repository. And as part of that, they

created the open hardware license and kind
of give some background on this. One of

the people that runs the team there is
Javier Serrano. He gave a cool interview

that's linked in the slides where he talks
about their motivation behind this and in

why they have the open hardware repository
and create the license. Though this can

get kind of confusing, there's not just
licenses, there's also copyright and

patents. At the Open Hardware Summit a few
years ago Ari Douglas gave a nice talk

about this so you can find that talk in
the link there in the slides. He goes over

what might be good for your project,
depending on what purposes you're trying

to achieve with your own project and kind
of goes over the different options there.

But what's the whole point of all this? So
the reason you might want to make your

project open source hardware is that you
want to enable collaborative development.

So we're talking about the idea here is
that you're going to share your design

files in your hoping other people will
help to contribute to your project,

contribute to the design of your hardware.
So I would say that's like the main reason

to release the design files for your
project is open source hardware. If you're

not interested in other people
collaborating on your project, then it

might not be the right thing for your
project. So it's good to consider whether

or not you want to have other people
contribute to your project. So I

mentioned, well it was mentioned at the
beginning: I'm part of the Open Source

Hardware Association. So we're a nonprofit
based in the US, even though we do have

board members around the world. We have
Mathias, who's one of our board members in

Vienna. I'm actually based in Berlin now
as well. So one of the things we do is we

host the definition of what open source
hardware is. We also have things like best

practices guide, a checklist that you can
go through to see if you're releasing all

the things you need to for open source
hardware project. But the main thing that

we do is we helped organize this event
called the Open Hardware Summit, and

that's going to be coming up in March of
2020 in New York City. So hope to see some

of you there if you can make it. This will
be our tenth one. And so we started in

2010. This year, though, we decided to do
something a little bit different. So we

had Open Hardware Month. So Idea with this
is, we wanted to have people from around

the world do locally organized meet ups
and talks and workshops that kicked off

with one in some in Vienna and Colorado in
the US. And it was really cool. We had 40

events in 14 different countries and we'll
be doing it again in 2020. So hopefully

some of you can get involved with events
wherever you're located. And if you're

wondering what happens with the Open
Hardware Summit, you can check out the

talks from our last one, which was in
2018. Give you an idea of what happens

there. In kind of some insight into the
different sorts of the projects people are

doing. I do a lot electronics, but there's
a lot more than that. There's people that

are doing science and art and design, all
sorts of different things. One of the

other things we do with the Officers Heart
Association is we have a certification

program. So this is self certification
program. You got a

"certificate.oshwa.org". And you you fill
out the name, your project, the license

you're using linked to your design files,
linked to your documentation, and then you

get this logo that you can use. And kind
of one of the value of this, if you're

making a project, is you can put that on
your packaging or I put it on like the

silk screen of my board. So then people
can really easily identify that it's open

hardware and then they can go to that Web
site and they can type an I.D. number and

be able to pull up the page that links
them to the documentation, the design

files. And then for people that are
looking for like I want a certain type of

device and I want to find one that's open
source hardware. If you see this logo, you

can go and look that up in the database
and find out more about it. So if you're

interested and know more about the Open
Source Hardware Association, you can go to

"oshwa.org". You can join as a member of
the association. We also have a mailing

list and a forum. If you want to check us
out on Twitter, the "@OHsummit" is the

Open Hardware Summit account, where we
have a lot of activity going on right now

about that because it's coming up in
March. Mean, our executive director,

Alicia Gib, who's one of the people that
started this summit, she wrote a book

called Building Open Source Hardware, and
it has essays from different people that

have built open hardware projects. So it's
a good thing to check out if you're

wanting to see what different experiences
people have had with that. So the point of

all, the kind, the main theme of this talk
was about Linux on open source hardware,

which is my two favorite things. So one of
my favorite projects was developed by

Bunnie, who gave an awesome talk on the
first day here at Congress. And Sean Cross

(xobs) he was giving a workshop right now
on the FOMU. So this was a completely open

source laptop for everything, including
the all the electronics were were open

source. And at the time when this came
out, like four or five years ago, it was

it was a pretty decent system. I have one
and I used it for for many years. So this

is a really cool idea of having a laptop
that I can use every day. That's open

hardware. And it had some cool features
like an FPGA and a software defined radio.

And then if you're wondering what's kind
of coming up next, if you go to the CDC,

CDC area here at Congress, you can see the
reform laptop. So Lucas from MNT is there.

He has this is a completely open source
hardware laptop. The electronics, the

mechanical design, everything. So I
recommend you go check that out. It's

really cool. It's in the CDC area, which
is the critical decentralized cluster. So

one of the other things I'm involved with
is a "beagleboard.org". So we're a

nonprofit organization that helps design
open hardware computers. That is

everything for people from makers to
students, even Professionals that are

designing into their projects. And what we
do is we work with different manufacturers

and we also work with the community to
come up with designs that are useful. So

this started off with the Beagle Board
back in 2008, so this was kind of the

first low cost ARM development board. In
back at that time a lot of people were

needing ARM hardware to port their free
software and open source software to ARM,

and the board was pretty popular for that.
We followed it up with littleler board

called the BeagleBone, which fits into the
old toys tin, if you've seen those mid

tins, if you've probably used the
BeagleBone your probably most really with

the beagle bone black, which was, I would
say still our most popular board. So kind

of the theme here is because it's open
source hardware, there's a whole bunch of

different BeagleBones made by different
manufacturers with different features and

different price points like a SeedStudio
decided probably most people don't care

about HDMI, so they took the HDMI off to
save some cost. Arrow wanted to make one

that worked with industrial temps, so they
it's a little bit more expensive, but it

has industrial temp components on it. And
then one of the things that's important

with open source hardware is we want
people to be able to take the design files

and make derivatives. So we have this
smaller one called the PocketBeagle. The

cool thing about this is a pretty simple
circuit board. It has something called the

system in package that integrates a lot of
the chips. So it makes the board layout

really simple. So this is just a four
layer circuit board and it's available in

Eagle and also in Key CAD. And if you have
some experience like if you go over to the

hardware hacking area, you can learn to do
surface mount assembly and with a little

bit of experience, you could order the
board, order the parts and build your own.

Or as Kumar did, he wanted to make a logic
analyzer board. So he took the design of

the PocketBeagle and he added on the
features he needed, like the inputs for

the probes. And he also added a gigabit
networking. So this is kind of cool to see

people take the design in the PocketBeagle
and then modify it for their project for

their use case. And here's an example of
the the logo. So the latest boy we had was

the BeagleBone AI. So we registered that
back in the summer. So it's US because it

was registered in the US as a country code
and then it's 169. So it's just like a

sequential number. So it's easy for people
to identify if they go to the git hub. OK.

It's open source hardware certified and
then it links off to the page with the

database with information about it. So I
wanted to mention, Olimex we're here in

Europe. And, you know, in Bulgaria is one
of the best open hardware companies, in my

opinion. And they have a line of open
source hardware, Linux computers called

the OLinux. We know. And the person behind
Olimex fed. has a great blog post about

open source hardware and why it matters to
them. So a few years ago, they wanted to

create a ARM 64 bit ARM board that was
completely open source and designed in

KiCAD, which is a free software open
source circuit design software. Tsvetan

and gave a nice talk at FOSDEM a few years
ago about the process of them switching

from their proprietary CAD software over
to KiCAD and designing this open source

hardware board. So and then if you've not
heard of KiCAD before or KiCAD doesn't

really matter what you say. Some people
say "Keycad" some people say "kaicad" but

it's open source software for designing
circuit boards. It's cross platform runs

on Macs, Windows and Linux. And one of the
cool things about it now is. There's

developers at CERN that are working on it.
And the project leader, Wayne, is now

working on a full time is this job. So
it's cool to see a lot of the developers

now being able to do it as their day job.
So it's kind of getting critical mass in

that way. And if you want to try it out, I
recommend if you search on YouTube for

"Getting to Blinky", it's a nice tutorial
about teaches you how to go through and

make a little board that blinks an LED. So
Olimex took that board that they designed

in KiCAD, the OLinux we know, a 64, and
they wanted to make a laptop with it. So

that's called the terrorists One the
design files are git hub for it. So the

idea there is to make a modular laptop
that people can put different boards in

and things like that. Another interesting
open hardware project was the "chip",

which you might have heard of, it was
built as a nine dollar computer. They had

a really successful Kickstarter back in
2015. Unfortunate that company went on a

business in 2018 three years later. But
the cool thing about it was it was all

open source hardware, the schematics, the
PCB, the build materials. And if you see

here, there is this really cool thing
called the pocket ship, which was this

nice like handheld little Linux computer.
It was really cool. But the company went

to business, which was unfortunate. But
this one person, Christopher, he goes by

"Groguard". He designed his own board that
plugs into the pocket chip. And if you

click on the link in the slides, you can
see doom running on it, which is like, oh,

it's the demo that you show with a Linux
system. Then he went and designed this

other board, which is pretty cool, so this
fits into a popular form factor for

microcontroller boards called the Adafruit
Feather form Factor. And this is a full

Linux system. And you can. It's fully open
source and there is a crowdfunding

campaign for it. That happened earlier
this year. So one of the things I also

want to talk about, especially here at
Congress, is the idea of open source and

FPGAs. Then Well, I'll tell you about how
that plays into Linux. So being the really

cool things that's happened over the last
couple years and many some of the people

here, Congress have been a part of that.
Like Clifford Wolff and David Shaw, and

other people have built free software
tools that allows you to not have to use

the proprietary tools from the FPGA
vendors kind of wrote a Overview of this

and recent issue with hacks based
magazine. You can download the PDF for

free if you want to check that out. And
one of the talks at Congress a few years

ago was from Clifford Wolf. So this kind
of all started off with this one FPGA

called the iCE40. And he wrote kind of
over time wrote different pieces of

software that you need to be able to take
your design and put it onto an FPGA. So

that was for a part called the iCE40. So
that was Project Ice Storm. And then a few

years later. David Shaw primarily helped
develop open source software that lets you

put onto a more capable part called the
ECP5. And then most recently, there's a

there's project x-ray and another project
called Symbol Flow that's been working on

bringing open source tools to higher end
of FPGAs. These Xilinx Series 7 FPGA,

they're going to add a lot more
capabilities. So why is this important for

Linux? Well, if we have an FPGA that's
capable enough, we can put a soft core in

there and then we can potentially run
Linux on that soft core. So Greg is here

at Congress and he designed this really
cool board. This also an Adafruit form

factor called the orange crab. And
actually yesterday he got Linux to run on

it, which was really fun. So this is a
open source hardware board. You can

download the designs of the board and it's
using a soft core in a FPGA to run Linux.

One of the other boards came out of a
hackerspace in Croatia "radiona.org", and

that's also using the ECP5 FPGA and that's
capable of running Linux as well. And

they're doing about to do a crowdfunding
campaign now so you can check that out on

"crowdsupply". And David Shaw was one of
the open source developers. He created

this "ultimate" board called the 'Trellis
Board', which I think would be probably

pretty attractive for running Linux. I
think it has a gigabyte of DDR memories of

its pretty substantial system for running
Linux and its open source. You can

download the plans and build it. And then
recently, back in November, there was the

Hackaday Super Conference and everyone at
the conference got this badge, which was

kind like this Gameboy form factor, but it
has the ECP5 FPGA that allows us to have a

soft core on there and run Linux. So kind
of some different options of open hardware

boards that are using soft cores in FPGA
is to run Linux. And then one of the

people over in the open FPGA assembly here
at Congress is a pretty cool picture, as I

was talking about, like a soft core. Well,
what does that look like when it's an

FPGA? So this is kind of a cool picture of
what it looks like when all those

different gates are laid out inside the
FPGA to have a Linux capable processor

core. So one of the ways that we do this
is so we talk about a soft core, well, how

do you make that? And one of the important
pieces software that all these boards that

was is showing you use is a project called
"LiteX". So this is a pretty interesting

way of creating a system on chip inside
the FPGA. An extra uses a Python based

language called Migen. And if you're
interested in it, I'd recommend checking

out this blog posts from Bunnie where he
talks about the advantages of it. And it

gives you things like it gives you like a
DRAM controller, Ethernet controller, PCI

controller SATA controller so you can take
those pieces of IP and put them together

for what you need for your project. And
then in terms of the soft core we can, one

of the things that LiteX gives you is the
ability to run a RISC-V soft core. So that

project's called LiteX on Linux or Linux
on LiteX, and that's what the Orange Crab

is using in the HackaDay badge and those
other projects, the radio and a board.

That's how it's running. There's a couple
of projects that are doing similar things

as well. But the Linux on LiteX is one of
the ones that a lot of people are using

and a screenshot of what it looks like
when it boots up. So I was already kind of

talking about RISC-V a bit and if you're
not familiar with it. You probably heard

of like x86 intelx86 or ARM. That's an
instructions that it's the instructions

that the processor executes. You write
code, it gets compiled into instructions

that run on the processor. So RISC-V is an
instructions set that came out of

university, California, Berkeley, in it's
a free and open source instruction set. So

anyone can take this instruction set and
implemented in a in a chip like an FPGA or

actually make a actual silicon chip. So
one of these examples of this is there are

there's a university in Columbia and they
decided to make their own microcontroller

based on RISC-V called the Open-V. So this
is really cool. It was fully open sourced

chip then design of the whole chip is open
source and it can run the RISC-V

instruction set. However, it's not quite
good enough to, or it's not capable enough

to run Linux and fortunately gets more
meant for microcontroller applications.

Another organization is called "lowRISC"
and they were kind of founded with the

idea of being able to create a RISC-V
based system on chip tech could do

something like be a basic smartphone. So
they're still working on that. But I am

pretty excited this will happen in the
future there. One of the people that

started lowRISC is Alex Bradbury, and he
gave a interesting talk a few months ago

about the future of operating systems on
RISC-V. So I recommend checking that out

if you're interested in like the ecosystem
of the tool chains involved in things like

that. So similar to Oshwa. There is a
organization for chip design called

"FOSSi", which is the free and open source
Silicon Foundation, and they do a great

job of putting together all these
different projects into events. They have

one called Orconf, which happens every
year here in Europe. They also have a

conference now in the US called Latch-Up.
That's going to be coming up in April at

M.I.T. They also host a web site, called
"LibreCores". So people are designing this

open source chip designs or IP blocks for
things like Ethernet or memory

controllers. And if you. They created
LibreCores as a site that you can share

those. And so if I'm going to build an
open source chip, I can go in there and

find different blocks or functionality I
need. There was also an event earlier this

year called the Week of Open Source
Hardware. So this is all hosted by Fossi.

They have all the talks online from these
conferences if you want to check them out.

So one of the companies that was founded
by some of the people that created the

RISC-V instruction set is called SiFive,
and they've actually produced a few

commercial chips, one of which is this
microcontroller here. And one of the co-

founders and CTOs has a interesting talk
about their RISC-V ecosystem. And so like

companies like Western Digital have
decided to switch all the core in their

drives over to RISC-V. And NVIDIA has
decided to take out a little

microcontrollers in their GPUs and turn
those over to RISC-V as well. This is a

microcontroller board based on that SiFive
microcontroller, which is quite

interesting, but unfortunately can't run
Linux on it. So one of the surprises last

year at Fossdem was Palmer from SiFive
debut this board called the HiFive

Unleashed. So this is a multi core 64 bit
board that can run Linux. It runs it

really well. The one downside to this is
it was meant to be an evaluation board, so

it's quite expensive if it's a thousand
dollars. So in it, they're not going to

ever make it in volume. So a little
disappointing, but that. The other option

there. So there's these high end boards
like this one. It's kind of expensive

because it's made in low volume. There's
also some cheap microcontrollers. One is

called the, from Kendait the KT10. It is
basically a microcontroller with a lot of

memory. And it, there is possibility to
run Linux on it. So add Linux plumbers

this year when the people from Western
Digital gave a talk about running Linux on

this kind of essentially a
microcontroller. You can check out that

link there. There's a talk about it and
there's slides from the conference.

They're also in the Lenny's kernel. They
started adding support to be able to run

Linux on these RISC-V, essentially
microcontrollers. It's not great, but it's

kind of like we're gonna have to work what
we have with what. We have to work with,

what we have right now. If you're
interested more in more about how Linux

runs on RISC-V, then you can check out
this talk from hot chips a few months ago

and it goes into like how the Linux kernel
works on RISC-V. And the other cool thing

is both Debian and Fedora have initial
distributions now for RISC-V. And if you

don't have hardware like that unleashed
board, you can still try this out on your

computer using an emulator called QEMU. So
one of things is exciting is like two

weeks ago at the RISC-V summit in
California NXP announced that there's

going to be a chip early next year that's
going to be a Linux capable SoC. So this

is quite exciting. This could allow us to
make like a board that wouldn't be too

expensive and be pretty high performance.
So one of things I want to hopefully maybe

be a part of or encourage people to do is
make a board that's less than one hundred

dollars that runs risk five. One route is
we use FPGA as another route is maybe when

this chip comes out, there'd be a
possibility and then could we do it by the

next CCC? I don't know if you're
interested in this. Get in touch. I would

like to try and get a community effort
going around this idea of making a RISC-V

board that can run Linux. So I don't know
if I have any time left, but I'm happy to

take questions.
[filler please remove in amara]

applause
[filler please remove in amara]

Herald: Thanks, Drew, yes. We actually do
have some time left. Actually, about 10

minutes. So if you do have questions, pile
up at the microphones that you see here.

And we start with a question from the
Internet. Sure. Take your time. Just start

talking into the microphone. Yeah. Why is
the microphone off the signal angel not

working? All right. We just started with a
question from microphone number two then,

while the signal angel is working out his
microphone. There you go.

Mic 2: Hi. Is this working? Yes.
Herald: Move close to the microphone.

touches the microphone
Herald: It is on, It is on.

Mic 2: Hi, Drew. Thank you very much.
Thanks very much for the talk. I've been

having a lot of fun using your pocket
beguiling combination with the Bella

system.
Drew: Oh?

Mic 2: Actually, I've been able to get it
on stage on the Royal Albert Hall earlier

this year. And one of the things I'm
really enthused about in that project is

that using the center of my realtime
operating system. It really seems super.

Yeah. The breach between the low latency
performance of a microprocessor and the

the Octopus connects to everything in low
entry to development of Linux world. As

you see more of these examples using
?????? or order.

Drew: Yeah. So just to give people that
are familiar with the terms a little bit

of background, ??????????, essentially
this co kernel, it runs alongside Linux

and allows you to do like real time tasks
like in this case audio like low latency

audio for instruments or other things like
doing motor control. The Linux kernel

developers have been doing a lot of work
of getting the Linux kernel to run great

with real time tasks, but depends on what
your deadlines are. So for things like

building instruments, those are pretty
latency sensitive and ?????????? running

around of doing that. So if you're
interested in other projects called

Machine Kit, it's an open source CMC
controller. They simply have deadlines

like having to read a motoring coder or
send out pulses to a stepper motor. So,

you know, I think it really did. So with
real time things is what you're talking

about. It really depends on what your
deadlines are like. So in the case of

Bella, they're still using ?????????
because they need to be, they need a

certain minimum latency, that they can
still only achieve with that. But I will

say with the linux kernel, there's been a
lot of work that's been going on. And the

linux kernel was much better than it used
to be in terms of handling real time

tasks.
Mic 2: OK, cool.

Drew: And if you're interested in Bella, I
think there's someone from the team here

in the room, so..
Mic 2: Really?

Drew: Yeah, you can have..
Herald: The person identifying is

themselves here. All right.
Mic 2: Thank you.

Herald: Thanks for the question. Thanks
for the answer. Let's have another try

with the Internet?
Signal Angel: Is using open source

software hardware design required or
enforced to get the open hardware

certification?
Drew: Yeah, that's a really good question,

which I didn't clarify enough. So
according to the open source hardware

definition that we have from Oshawa, you
can use whatever software you want. One of

the reasons is for certain types of
things, especially like mechanical design,

proprietary software is still the norm.
This is also the case with circuit design.

Kicad has only really got in like really
good and stable probably the last five

years. So kind of as a matter of
practicality, 10 years ago, like most

people were still using proprietary
software to design mechanical designs and

software designs. Ideally, I think, you
know, if the ideas you want enable

collaboration, using free software, using
open source software would enable as many

people as possible to be able to
contribute to your project. But it is not

according to our definition that we have
hosted on Oshawa, is not a requirement. So

say best practice, use free software but
it is not required.

Herald: Thanks. Microphone number one,
please.

Mic 1: How far is the performance for
everyday computing on RISC-V. Like can I

run my everyday programing toolchain on a
RISC-V processor?

Drew: You could run it? The one downside
to the soft core is on these FPGA is so

like the ECP 5 which I mentioned, it's
only running at maybe 50 megahertz, 100

megahertz. One of the reasons I brought up
cymbal flow and project x ray is that's

going to enable us to use open source
tools on these higher end Xilinx FPGAs

which will unlock greater performance
still with soft cores. It's going to be if

you're looking to be competitive with like
ARM and Intel, it's not going to be there.

But one of the cool things that think
about is an FPGA. So you have a lot of

flexibility like in terms of the
peripherals you can do, you know, so kind

of getting creative in terms of, well,
maybe the clock speeds aren't really fast,

but it's enough PGA so you could add
hardware accelerators to do things that

you might otherwise be burning cycles on
our processor to do. But that's also why

I'm hoping people will start making chips.
I'm excited about that. And XP

announcement because yeah, like we need
silicon to have like the performance that

we're used to on like ARM and Intel.
Herald: Thanks. We have yet another

question from the Internet.
Signal Angel: Do you think it's feasible

to create a package manager for open
hardware like paper or NPM?

Drew: That is a good question and I think
one of the things that I would say like

open, open hardware is almost kind of like
20 years behind open source software. And

I think one of the reasons is a lot of the
tools that people use for designing

hardware. It's difficult to collaborate on
designs. You know, a lot of these CAD

programs like it's not the same as like
source code, like, you know, I store all

my hardware designs in github. But if I
look at like the diffs in git, like, you

know, they're not very meaningful. So I
think one of the issues we have is for

people to collaborate and hardware like we
need better tools that allowed us to track

changes. And in Nick do puri question
merges in a more meaningful way. So I'm

sure everyone here that sees CAD tools and
tried to work with other people. It can be

it can be difficult. So I think that's an
area that can be improved in terms of like

hosting things. You know, I just talked to
someone today that talked about the Open

Source Hardware Observatory where they
were trying to like collect lots of

different projects. So I think we can
definitely have Web sites that like show

what projects are out there. But in terms
of like being able to like collaborate on

things like libre course, check out libre
course, they're trying to do that as well

for processor design, being able to go on
there and like grab either net controller

or a memory controller in a way, actually
a chip design almost better because if you

look at the hardware design languages,
it's more like source code. But yeah.

Kicad is difficult to collaborate on
still, I think.

Herald: All righty. Microphone number one,
please.

Mic 1: During the presentation, you
mentioned that there are several great

products trying to develop software for
FPGA for commercial FPGA devices. I was

wondering if you are aware of any products
trying to develop open source FPGA

architecture or something similar to
RISC-V instruction set about for a FPG

world?
Drew: Right. So yeah. The other thing here

is so we're talking about open source
tools for getting things on to FPGAs, but

there's also the idea of like the open
source chip design. So I don't personally

I'm not heard of any like projects where
they're trying to do like an open source

FPGA. But I think if you if you have time
stopped by the open FPGA assembly and also

over and in the hardware hacking area. Tim
and Tim and Sloan's jobs are over there.

And they they know a lot about things that
are happening there as well. But I think

it would be cool and Bunny's talk here at
Congress on the first day was about the

idea of like using FPGA is because they're
more easier to inspect in if we can make

like an open source FPGA chip. I think
they'd be in better.

Herald: Another question from the
Internet, please?

Signal Angel: What about performance per
watt?

Drew: I'm sorry?
Signal Angel: What about performance per

watt?
Drew: With RISC-V or FPGA or..

Signal Angel: Both I think.
Drew: Both, yeah. Probably FPGA is not

great with that because, you know, as
compared to an asic or silicon design they

are not as power efficient. RISC-V, I
don't know. I've not seen a whole lot of

numbers around that. You know, I think
it's still kind of early days when it

comes to RISC-V. Also, like a lot of it's
still soft cores and FPGAs, but you're not

going to be as great in terms of power.
But there is a project out of ETH Zürich

of the university called Pulp P U L P and
it stands for parallel ultra low power. So

that's a family of RISC-V cores. So check
out pulp from ETH Zürich. I think they're

trying to do low power things.
Herald: Good question, though. Microphone

number one.
Mic 1: Thanks for the great talk. So as

you mentioned, there's a lot of NDAing and
copyrighting going on in the hardware

world. So one of the slides you showed
showed the risk 5 quad with an ??

interface next to it. So my question is,
do we have all the components, the

peripheral components to make a full
processor, on open source? So it there

still gaps in there?
Drew: I think there's still a lot of work

to be done there. And that's something
that Light X is trying to do like to pull

together these different IP blocks you
need to build the system on CHIP. Same

thing with libre of cause. But if you take
a look at ??? 5, like not everything. So

the core is open source, but in order to
tape out a chip that had certain

functionality like not all of the IP on
there is open source. So I think that is

something that hopefully in the future as
more people start doing open source IP for

chip design, we can hopefully have all the
different blocks that we need to make a

chip like one of the things CY 5 is
missing on their chips is, is USB, you

know, traditionally people like it will
get like USB controller from mentor

synopsis or something like that. So having
good, you know, verified, proven IP for

these common peripherals is important. So
yeah, it might be an open core, but then

it might have proprietary blocks around
it. So there's a lot of room there for

improvement, I think.
Herald: And with that, we're wrapping up.

Thank you very much for all of your
interesting questions. Also, thank you

very much for all the angels working here.
Thank you very much. To all the people

from Messe Leipzig, the Audio Video people
who work. And of course, the biggest thank

you again to Drew. Thank you very much for
the awesome talk. Another big, warm round

of applause, please. Thank you.
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