Antmicro was founded on the belief that open source can dramatically accelerate technological progress by enabling collaboration, transparency and freedom to customize, improve and combine various solutions, unlocking system design possibilities that would be otherwise unavailable.
For more than a decade we’ve been providing commercial support and engineering services around open source software and hardware to our customers, building cutting-edge computer systems for industries such as medical, automotive, robotics, aerospace and manufacturing. Our development spans the whole technology stack, from ASIC and FPGA, through hardware platforms, to edge AI software, up to complex cloud systems and tooling ecosystems. We’ve also become members of the most notable open source-oriented organizations and are leading innovators in embedded systems and machine vision.
Today we are happy to announce the new Antmicro Open Source Portal where you can take a tour of our open source projects, learn more about our mission and ways in which our technologies could be used to help you build your next-gen product.
The portal covers four areas which reflect the breadth of our open source activity – ASIC & FPGA, Development Platforms, Edge AI & software as well as Cloud systems. Read on for a summary, or head straight to the portal if you’d rather just browse through the projects.
ASIC & FPGA
ASIC & FPGA is heading towards a revolution which will bring about much more modular, software-driven and reusable systems – all enabled by open source. We leverage open source-driven flexibility and robustness across many aspects of the system design process. Using the diverse range of our vendor-neutral and portable FPGA IP cores we implement high-speed interfaces in ASICs and FPGAs, e.g. PCI Express, Ethernet, camera interfaces, audio and video codes, memory controllers, etc. Thanks to their open source character, they are free from licensing fees or vendor lock-in, giving our clients full control and insight into the systems we develop for them.
We also create the relevant open source tooling that automates FPGA and ASIC design processes. Some of those efforts are part of wide, long-term projects done in concert with open source organizations that we are members of, such as CHIPS Alliance or RISC-V International, where we are a Platinum and a Strategic Founding member respectively. We are a leading innovator around the open source RISC-V architecture and the ISA is also extensively supported in our popular simulation framework for systems development, Renode.
Development platforms
In our client projects we often use our own, ever-growing portfolio of open source hardware that includes baseboards for popular AI modules, camera boards, HDMI expansions, interface bridges and other accessories. Antmicro’s Open Source Jetson Baseboard that supports NVIDIA’s Jetson Nano, Xavier NX and TX2 NX System-on-Modules has been the basis for a wide range of our AI-capable industrial systems. It is available off the shelf and can be combined with other elements of our open hardware ecosystems, such as the SDI-MIPI CSI-2 bridge or flexible camera adapters, forming a robust platform for a variety of applications.
The most recent addition to the list is our ARVSOM System-on-Module. Targeting a range of use cases, it is based on RISC-V and works with Scalenode – our server-oriented baseboard for Raspberry Pi CM 4.
Naturally, the hardware is royalty free and we’ve been customizing it to meet diverse requirements of various industrial clients.
We also create drivers and ports for open source operating systems, e.g, Linux, Android, Zephyr RTOS, etc. industrial Android BSPs, software support of cameras and various other sensors and actuators.
The SDKs and libraries we develop based on open source enable secure and effective use of the hardware platform’s resources, especially interfacing with various audio and video devices, high-speed storage, memory and networking.
Edge AI & software
The AI-capable vision systems that we build using open source have been optimizing processes across a diverse range of sectors, e.g. heavy industry, medical, agriculture, defense and security, etc. We use and develop various open source machine learning frameworks, such as TensorFlow, exploring emerging areas of machine learning in collaboration companies such as Google and Western Digital. We build dedicated datasets to train algorithms for particular tasks as well as develop AI libraries for edge devices and tools that automate the AI software development process.
What is more, open source solutions have proven to be more than a suitable choice for systems that perform critical operations or handle classified information, as they are transparent and easily inspectable for potential security issues.
Cloud systems
The systems we build scale into device networks, fleets and hybrid compute clouds. We’ve been providing our customers with secure over-the-air update systems for remote configuration and updating of the devices we build, as well as developing Continuous Integration environments, often based on Renode, our open source system development and testing framework. Our projects from this domain have also included scalable pipelines automating machine learning workflows as well as hybrid compute systems that integrate various CPUs, GPUs and FPGAs and span public and private clouds.
Achieve more with open source
Open source allows system engineers to have complete control over their technology stack, giving access to modern design options that enable achieving high quality, scalability, shorter time to market, security and full control over the final product. Thanks to the visibility into their code, open source technologies evolve fast in a collaborative environment, are auditable for potential security flaws, and give unmatched design freedom and opportunity for vertical integration. We’ve been pioneers in using open source to build modern computer systems and we have the expertise needed to successfully combine and customize those technologies to develop products that exactly match our clients’ requirements, providing technological guidance and assistance in adopting open source in various business sectors.
Visit Antmicro Open Source Portal or reach out to us at contact@antmicro.com to find out how modern, open source solutions can transform your business.