A Look Back at the CHIPS Alliance’s Incredible Growth

It’s been just over a year since the CHIPS Alliance was founded with the mission of making open source hardware development more accessible to companies, universities and individuals. We’re working to bring the dynamics of the hugely successful open source software development model into ASIC design, building on the groundwork set by the RISC-V community. Progress over the past year is detailed in our Annual Report.

CHIPS Alliance is focused on expanding on this open hardware vision by:

• Targeting other parts of ASICs beyond the CPU core, gradually open sourcing all IPs that go into a SoC, both analog and digital.
• Open sourcing the tools needed to work with ASICs, making it possible to design innovative solutions without a massive upfront investment.
• Providing real, battle-proven reference implementations and project infrastructure to ensure the continued success of the projects we govern and support.

With these three pillars guiding our efforts, we believe that the CHIPS Alliance will enable truly open hardware to flourish for the first time. The CHIPS Alliance has already made incredible progress so far. We have achieved a number of important technical milestones, including announcing newly enhanced SweRV Cores – EH2 and EL2 – and releasing the Advanced Interface Bus (AIB) specification and reference implementations by one of the CHIPS Alliance’s newest members, Intel. These technical accomplishments are making it easier for engineers to design innovative embedded applications for the latest computing requirements.

We’re also excited by the significant community interest in the work we’re doing. Hundreds of people from around the world have attended CHIPS Alliance events over the past year, both in-person and online, and our working groups are running full steam ahead. Check out our Annual Report to learn more about the CHIPS Alliance’s news and activities, and stay up to date by following us on Twitter and LinkedIn.