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.

Open source advances deeper into hardware: The CHIPS Alliance project More>