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Hardware is software

Hardware is mainly a software affair: the structure and inner workings of an Integrated Circuit (IC) are defined in a specification language and compiled into a chip layout – much like the way a software program representing an algorithm is compiled into an executable. From a computer-science point of view, the two are equivalent.

From a practical point of view, hardware licences are very similar to, or the same as, those used in the open-source software world. Likewise, the use of these licences facilitates collaborative development, reuse and interoperability. Although some designers use existing open-source software licences, others prefer licences that specifically address hardware specifications, like the TAPR Open Hardware License and the CERN Open Hardware Licence.

Hardware is software

It's still early in terms of silicon implementations, tooling and operating system support, but the open RISC-V processor specification is making inroads in the processor world. As RISC-V Marketing Manager Ted Marena wrote at the beginning of this year on on IEEE Times, RISC-V is to open hardware what Linux has been to open-source software.

To research institutes, startups and government agencies involved in High-Performance Cmputing, and to bulk consumers of processing power, RISC-V provides an opportunity to participate and collaborate in creating a (European) technical and scientific ecosystem around an open design.

Avoiding licensing burdens

It has been five years since ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the University of Bologna in Italy started their joint PULP research project on the energy efficiency of microprocessor architectures. The project is fully based on open-source hardware and software, and has resulted in the tape-out of two dozen implementations.

The real freedom you get from open source projects is much more, and more important than the fact that you don't have to pay for it, Frank Gürkaynak, Director of ETZH's Microelectronics Design Center, writes in an article posted on All About Circuits. Researchers can take what we provide and freely change it for their experiments. Startup companies can build on what we provide as a starting point and concentrate their time and energy on the actual innovations they want to provide. And people who are disturbed by various attacks on their systems [1, 2] have the chance to look inside and know what exactly is in their system.

Last month version 5 of the KiCad software suite was released. It provides a set of OSS tools for designing electronic circuits and creating Printed Circuit Board (PCB) layouts, and is released under the GPLv3 licence.

Public institutions are a special kind of economic actor that can play a significant role in open-source development. KiCad is a testament to that.