“Can open source chip hardware shake up the embedded processor
market the way Linux is changing the face of the operating system
business? That’s the question a gang of chip designers called
OpenCores will attempt to answer when it launches its free 32-bit
Risc CPU core later this week.”
“Certainly OpenCores operates along the lines of the thousands
of software coders who co-operate across the Internet to develop
the Linux kernel. As Damjan Lampret, a 22-year-old computer science
student at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and one of the
OpenRisc design leaders, put it in an interview with EE Times: ‘We
are modeling ourselves on the Free Software Foundation. We’re
trying to work in a similar way.’ “
“Just as any PC user can download and compile the Linux
kernel, chip designers will soon be able to grab OpenCores’
OpenRisc 1000 design and use it as the basis for their own
processors, completely free of charge. OpenCores’ Web site
already offers an open source OpenRisc C compiler, and full
schematics and circuitry description files for the core itself will
soon be available for download.”