Embedded Linux QQ Group: 175159209, enthusiasts are welcome to join and discuss technical issues!
Linux, Apache, MySQL, and even Android are well-known in the tech industry, but can open source hardware become as popular as software? Arduino is just a development board; can chip design also adopt an open source model?
Known for its open source microcontroller development boards, Arduino released its latest development board, Portenta H7, at this year’s CES, aimed at industrial IoT applications. It adopts the MKR form factor, supports WiFi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity, and is equipped with a USB-C peripheral interface. Its core processor is the STM32H747 from ST, a dual-core microprocessor that integrates a Cortex-M7 core with a working frequency of 480MHz and a Cortex-M4 core with 240MHz. Based on Arm Pelion IoT technology, the Arduino Portenta H7 features high performance, low power consumption, and a wide temperature range, priced at only $100, making it especially suitable for emerging applications such as machine learning/AI, motor control, human-computer interaction, computer vision, IoT gateways, and edge computing. In terms of software, it supports Linux, Mbed OS, and other embedded real-time operating systems, as well as languages and standard libraries such as TensorFlow Lite, JavaScript, Python, MicroPython, and Arduino.
Arduino originated from a student project at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy, in 2005, initially aiming to develop a low-cost and easy-to-use device that can interact with the surrounding environment through sensors and actuators for beginners and professionals. The early development board, Arduino Uno, was equipped with an RS-232 serial interface and an Atmel ATmega8 microcontroller. The current MKR version was released at the Maker Faire in Rome, and apart from changing its dimensions to 67.64 × 25 mm, its built-in wireless connectivity and other features are particularly suitable for the IoT and industrial application market. Arduino has now attracted thousands of companies to participate in development and application, with millions of users worldwide, becoming a model of open source hardware innovation.
Linux, Apache, MySQL, and even Android are well-known in the tech industry, but can open source hardware become as popular as software? Arduino is just a development board; can chip design also adopt an open source model? The popularity of RISC-V gives a positive answer.
RISC-V originated at the University of California, Berkeley, as an open computer instruction set architecture (ISA) with only a few dozen basic instructions, much more streamlined than x86 and Arm architectures. The closed and expensive licensing of x86 and Arm architectures dominates the PC/server market and the smartphone market, but struggles to meet the low power, small size, and fragmented requirements in the emerging AI and IoT markets. RISC-V, as an open-source, open, and even free ISA and chip design model, brings a fresh force to open source hardware.
SiFive is a chip design company founded by the RISC-V founding team, and its latest release, SiFive Learn Inventor, is an IoT development board based on RISC-V chips, which has received certification from Amazon’s AWS cloud platform. The Amazon FreeRTOS real-time operating system now fully supports RISC-V and provides a range of free and open-source development software packages.
SiFive’s IoT development board uses SiFive’s 150 MHz FE310 SoC, with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and provides various interfaces and sensors, such as accelerometers, thermometers, compasses, and ambient light monitoring. It provides developers with a low-barrier entry point for using RISC-V to develop IoT devices, which will surely promote more smart devices connected to the AWS cloud platform to adopt and support RISC-V.
RISC-V has also been warmly embraced by the Chinese semiconductor industry, from Alibaba’s Pingtouge to Huawei’s HiSilicon, to Unisoc and GigaDevice, as well as RISC-V startups such as Chipone Technology and Youshi Technology, RISC-V processor cores and chips targeting the Arm Cortex M and A series are beginning to appear in the emerging AIoT application market. We believe that 2020 will see more hardware innovations and emerging applications based on RISC-V, which will also drive more people in Chinese universities’ microelectronics programs and chip design industries to participate in this wave of open-source hardware innovation.
From the development of Arduino and RISC-V, it can be seen that they originated from university research projects, adopted an open-source model for rapid dissemination, attracted more developers to participate in the open-source community, and promoted technological innovation and commercialization of open-source projects by establishing companies, thus entering mainstream markets and professional application fields. This innovation model is successful and worth learning from for future hardware innovators and companies.
