Open-source hardware is older than you might think. Sun released OpenSPARC in 2007, and IBM started OpenPOWER in 2013. OpenSPARC would die after Oracle bought Sun, and OpenPOWER remains largely IBM-driven. With the recent arrival of the RISC-V (pronounced Risk-Five), though, open-source CPU designs have finally caught fire. Now, the Linux Foundation is helping form the CHIPS Alliance project. CHIPS, in turn, will host and curate high-quality, open-source silicon device design code.
Backed by Esperanto, Google, SiFive, and Western Digital, the CHIPS Alliance will foster a collaborative environment for creating and deploying new open-source chip designs. These will be used across the entire spectrum of computing. This will include mobile, computing, consumer electronics, and Internet of Things (IoT) chip and System on a Chip (SoC) designs.
To read more, please visit: https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-source-advances-deeper-into-hardware-the-chips-alliance-project/.