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Full Wuthering Bytes programme now up.
by Andrew Back 15 Sep '15

15 Sep '15

Hi All, We now have a 7th workshop on the Sunday of OSHCamp, run by Ken Boak and entitled, "Climbing Bare Metal Mountain - A Hardware Engineer's Approach to Bare Metal ARM programming". http://wutheringbytes.com/days/oshcamp/workshops.html On the Monday the BCS OSSG and Open Source Consortium are hosting Open for Business, with some great speakers lined-up: http://wutheringbytes.com/days/openforbusiness/talks.html On Friday 2nd October there will now be a closing keynote from Eva Pascoe, who founded the world's first cybercafe back in 1994. http://wutheringbytes.com/days/festival/talks.html Plus details are now up for the 3 days that Calderdale Council are hosting between 29/09 and 01/10. The Tues in particular should appeal to those with an interest in open data. http://wutheringbytes.com/ Cheers, Andrew PS. There's also talk of having a bit of a bring and buy / free technojunk / swaps table(s) on the Saturday. So, an excellent opportunity to bring along that interesting $WIDGET that you've never done anything with, to swap it for something else that you may or may not do something with.

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Bluetooth sniffing
by Paul Tanner 19 Aug '15

19 Aug '15

Hi all, I'm doing quite a lot with Bluetooth LE at the moment and I'm looking at available sniffers to help me sort out the odd oddness. Has anyone tried the <http://greatscottgadgets.com/ubertoothone/>Ubertooth<http://greatscottgadgets.com/ubertoothone/> One? It's open hardware and software. I'm inclined to buy one ready-made but just checking if there are any tales good or bad about it? Any other approaches that I should look? Thx. Paul Paul Tanner - Virtual Technologies - http://www.virtual-techno.com Tel: +44 1494 581979 Mob: +44 7973 223239 mailto:paul@virtual-techno.com

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MFS Meeting. Tue, 18 Aug. Talk: "Novena demo"
by Michael Dorrington 14 Aug '15

14 Aug '15

Please feel free to forward this to those that would welcome it. * Event: Manchester Free Software's August Meeting * Talk: Novena demo * Speaker: Michael Dorrington * Date: Tuesday, 18th August 2015 (3rd Tuesday of the month) * Start time: 19:00 * Finish time: 20:30 (and then on for drinks) * Location: Madlab. (Manchester Digital Laboratory). - http://madlab.org.uk/ * Address: 36-40 Edge Street, Manchester. M4 1HN. - Opposite "Common" on Edge Street, Northern Quarter. - http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/53.48413/-2.23639 == Details == The purpose of Manchester Free Software is to promote the Free Software philosophy. Every meeting we start with an opportunity for informal key signing. For an explanation of what this is about see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signing_party The main part of the meeting will be a talk. The talk will be on demonstrating the Novena, a free hardware computer that has some interesting features including FPGA and Software Defined Radio (SDR). The talk will include describing the assembly and tweaks that the end user has to do. * https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena * http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page * https://myriadrf.org/projects/novena-rf/ If you have experience of FPGA programming or SDR on free software then please consider giving a lightning talk at the meeting. == After-meeting == The meeting will be followed by informal discussion and socialising in the Terrace (which is next door to Madlab). There are soft drinks available and there is no pressure to consume alcohol. == Location == The meeting will take place at the usual venue of Madlab, details above. Ring the bell on the right of the door to be let in. The venue provides Wi-Fi. == Transport == === Parking === Around the venue there are parking meter bays that become zero cost after 8pm on Tuesday so you will have to pay up until then and the maximum stay is 2 hours BUT MAKE SURE YOU VERIFY ALL THIS on parking. There are paid parking lots around the venue, they are marked by a blue P in this OpenStreetMap centred on Madlab <http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/53.4843/-2.2365>. Most of those parking lots are owned by NCP <http://www.ncp.co.uk/>. If you can’t decide otherwise then park in Manchester Arndale <http://www.manchesterarndale.com/directions.aspx>. === Public Transport === Manchester Victoria (MCV) train station, Shudehill tram and bus station, and Manchester Piccadilly bus station are all fairly close to Madlab, see OpenStreetMap centred on Madlab <http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/53.4843/-2.2365>. Manchester Piccadilly (MAN) train station and Manchester Central Coach Station are not too far away either. == More Information == Information about Manchester Free Software can be found on the Manchester Free Software pages on LibrePlanet <https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Manchester>. Regards, Mike. MFS Chair. -- FSF member #9429 http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=9429 http://www.fsf.org/about "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users."

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Open Source Hardware Camp 2015, Sat 26 & Sun 27th September.
by Andrew Back 10 Aug '15

10 Aug '15

Hello, Registration is now open for OSHCamp 2015. This year we will have 13 talks and 6 workshops, details of which can be found below. The Wuthering Bytes Festival Day programme has also been published and details can be found at: http://www.wutheringbytes.com/days/festival/talks.html Cheers, Andrew // OSHCamp 2015 — 26th & 27th September at Hebden Bridge Town Hall, St. George's Street, Hebden Bridge, HX7 7BY. Registration: http://oshcamp2015.eventbrite.co.uk/ Open Source Hardware Camp will take place in the Pennine town of Hebden Bridge. For the third year running it is being hosted as part of the technology festival, Wuthering Bytes. Note that a social is planned for the Saturday evening. Hebden Bridge is approximately 1 hour by rail from Leeds and Manchester. Budget accommodation is available at the Hebden Bridge Hostel, with private rooms available and discounts for group bookings. Details of other local accommodation can be found at www.hebdenbridge.co.uk. Any questions should be directed to the Discussion List. — Saturday :: Talks * Research led reality – how rhetoric and research shapes the maker movement Over the past 10 years there has been an exponential rise in research about makerspaces, alongside rhetoric about the ‘maker movement’ going mainstream. This talk will give a sweeping overview of the past decade, focusing on the relationship between rhetoric, research and reality – (is there more to it than alliteration?) It will attempt to answer these three questions: What are the promises of the maker movement and does the evidence built up by the research so far prove them? What does the research tell us about the differences between the UK and USA maker movement? Who is funding all the research and what are their motivations and agendas? Hannah Stewart is a Research Associate at the Royal College of Art and an independent researcher. Alongside Andrew Sleigh she was commissioned to produce the UK Makerspaces Open Dataset for NESTA. Her Phd research with the Creative Exchange focused on the values and practices of the makerspace, indieweb and open data communities. * Confusion of Things — The IoT Hardware Kerfuffle While the definition of the term IoT (i.e: Internet of Things) is as cloudy as the “cloud”, everyone seems to be doing it. With excitement levels reaching stratospheric levels, the amount of buzzword-driven articles and colourful (and oh so unnecessary) abstract vector drawings that depict toasters communicating with cars have essentially made lives of many engineers who just want to build things a living hell. This talk will strip back the layers of marketing and aim to answer the question: “Which hardware platform should you use for building connected devices?”. With the plethora of chips/single board computers and specifically IoT-branded offerings out there, the platform choice does get a little difficult at times. By breaking down the application at hand into certain key requirement categories, this process could be simplified. There will also be mention of some of the most popular hardware platforms and how they differ from each other. Omer Kilic is an embedded systems engineer who likes tinkering with small computers of all shapes and sizes. He works at the various intersections of hardware and software engineering practices and likes good beer. * Disrupting the IoT by leveraging the ESP8266 for big data The ESP8266 is as a cheap, self-contained WIFI module; for £3 you can add WIFI to your microcontroller project. Recently, the toolchain for compiling custom firmware for the module's SOC has been ported to the Arduino IDE, making it possible for beginners to deploy the ESP8266 as a complete IoT wireless sensor/actuator. This talk will cover: ESP8266 capabilities, the rest of the ESP8266 family members, using the module as a WIFI gateway with AT commands, uploading your own firmware using the recent Arduino port, and projects utilising the module. Matthew Venn is a freelance engineer and workshop facilitator. As a qualified electronic engineer, he has worked with Arcola Energy, BOC, RS, Sustrans, Bristol Braille Technology and others on various projects ranging from bicycle powered cinemas to fuel cell theatre lighting. Matthew's hands-on STEM workshops have proven successful with over 5,000 children taking part worldwide over the last 3 years. Recent workshops include the London School's Hydrogen cell Challenge, an aerial photography project for Island Hydrogen and building solar mood lamps for the Abu Dhabi Science Festival. When he's not inventing new ways of getting people excited about engineering, Matthew plays music, invents puzzle boxes, practices martial arts and is a director of Bristol Hackspace. * Controlling a CNC milling machine with a BeagleBone Black and Machinekit A journey into the wonderful world of CNC machining. This talk will look at the modification of an old milling machine, retrofitting it with new electronics for improved performance and open source software control. Also covered will be things learnt along the way and how to take an idea through to machined part. Stuart Childs enjoys designing and building physical projects, has exhibited at every Maker Faire UK event and worked at Arduino specialists, oomlout. He is a supporter of Open Knowledge and has helped in running their annual OKFest and OKCon events in 2012, 2013 and 2014. * Speculative Hardware in Abstract Culture Derek will talk about open hardware as a speculative practice in abstract culture. Derek's talk will be grounded in his experience with the Arts Council England R&D projects at the Digital Research Unit 10 years ago that commissioned innovative DIY/open hardware and audiovisual software tools and software art released under a free/open licenses. His talk will work with the design-fictional concept of noise to explore the function of open hardware in abstract culture. In the talk Derek will give a brief account of abstract culture in contemporary practice where artists are directly involved in making hardware and software works realised by the use of free and open source technologies. Derek Hales is an independent researcher in the field of abstract culture. He has worked in academic and para-academic contexts of artist-led R&D and cultural production. He co-founded the Digital Research a semi-autonomous art-technology research facility based at the media centre Huddersfield and at Bates Mill, Huddersfield until 2009, where he worked on projects with the universities of Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield. He has previously been funded by Arts Council England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council and the Higher Education Innovation Fund. His pataphysical take on speculative hardware in abstract culture was recently published as a chapter in the book ‘Deleuze and Design’ (2015) by Edinburgh University Press. Derek is currently completing his Phd with the Royal College of Art. He is a director of Bridge Rectifier, Hebden Bridge Hackspace. * How to Openwash Your Product and Make Your Millions! Open Hardware has sparked a home brew electronics revolution. The current wave of 3D printers, drones and development boards are in the most part built on Open Hardware. As a result Open Hardware or Open Source Hardware have become terms with which many new products would like to be associated with, it’s rare to see an electronics Kickstarter project without the claim of being Open Source. It would seem however that in some cases the understanding of what constitutes Open Hardware is different to the original definition. Openwashing is a term that refers to dubious vendor claims about openness, and assumes, perhaps wrongly, that the misunderstanding of the Open Source definition is intentional. Benjamin Gray is a proponent of Open Hardware, founder of MeArm, an open source robot arm manufacturer and phenoptix, a now retired maker business. Ben graduated from the University of Exeter with a chemistry degree and a fledgling phenoptix before moving to Nottingham to complete a PhD in theoretical physical chemistry. With 11 years of Maker business experience under his belt he's set out on a new adventure manufacturing the MeArm, a pocket sized robot arm. * Simulating and benchmarking the Adapteva Parallella board The Adapteva Epiphany is a fascinating combination of old and new: a brand new, energy-efficient SoC processor that makes use of an old idea in concurrency: communicating sequential processes. This talk will be a deep-dive into the design of the Epiphany from the point of view of a software developer. We will look at the design of the Epiphany through the lens of a new simulator for the chip, and explore the SDK through a series of new benchmarks. Sarah Mount is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Wolverhampton, with particular interests in concurrency, parallelism and dynamic languages. * Introducing a fun documentation standard to share your project DokuBricks is a new open source hardware (OSH) documentation software we developed to make it easier for you to document your project well. After all, sharing instructions in a way that is useful to others is the whole purpose of OSH! With the tool, you click together your documentation in a descriptive and modular fashion and create dependencies. An associated database allows to easily reuse functional modules of projects, which in turn grows the impact and recognition of the creator of the original project. The ideas behind this free and open source documentation standard will be presented along with other OSH projects of ours in the Cambridge network. Our vision is to make OSH development and sharing easier and specifically more attractive to scientists - a group that develops a large amount of functional devices on a routine basis but rarely shares that insight. Tobias Wenzel "Tobey" is a Winton Scholar at the University of Cambridge who channels most of his enthusiasm into his Bioengineering work. He has build a range of equipment but is generally more involved in meta-projects that enable greater community impact to further technological development and access to it. He is a passionate promoter of hands-on education and loves to socialise with people sharing his can-do attitude. The DokuBricks project is a collaborative effort involving the IRNAS institute, OpenPlants, Tobey's colleague, Johan Henriksson, and more enthusiastic helpers. * C88 — possibly the world's lowest spec PC What happens when somebody designs a CPU simply to prove to themselves that they can? The result is minimal and has few practical applications but could be a great learning tool. C88 is an 8 bit computer with only 8 bytes of memory, it represents a bare minimum computer architecture. It was inspired by the world's first stored-program computer, the SSEM, more commonly known as The Manchester Baby. It's fully open source and there is even a simulator that runs in your browser. Daniel Bailey is studying electronics at the University of York, has a scholarship with ARM and is a member of York Hackspace. * Using open source processors and fabrics for scale-out compute Using open source processors and fabrics for scale-out compute systems. This talk will give an overview of the challenges faced by the industry and the technical approach we are taking. Rob Taylor has been working commercially with Linux and Open Source technologies since the late 90's. He founded two Open Source consultancies, Collabora and Codethink, and is now founding a new company to bring Open Source Hardware to the enterprise market. * WSPR, You Versus the Atmosphere: Pushing the limits of radio with minimal hardware WSPR is a transmission protocol designed to test the radio propagation properties of the atmosphere using very low powered transmission. This talk will describe the problem of unpredictable atmospheric propagation, give an overview of WSPR, and show some of the ways to set up a WSPR station as both a transmitter or a receiver. * Jenny List is an electronic engineer and radio amateur who has worked in the is an electronic engineer and radio amateur who has worked in the start-up, Language Spy, aiming to democratise access to language corpora and lexical data. * Low level Ethernet on micros and FPGA Forget about ISO 7 layer abstractions, Berkley sockets, huge APIs and even operating systems. This is about taking direct control of Ethernet hardware with a micro or even an FPGA and finding that it’s not that hard. Standard C code running on an ARM CortexM4 micro supporting ARP, UDP and enough ICMP to PING ! And a quick tour of doing the same thing in VHDL on a low cost FPGA. Michael Kellett is an independent Electronic design engineer with analogue and digital hardware experience starting with HiFi audio in the 1970s, though designing microphones, accelerometers, test gear and active suspension controls. Now he’ll design anything electronic (nothing evil) for anyone but with a preference for low power analogue, small micros and things with FPGAs in them. * Open Hardware Licensing - it’s easier than you think There are several hundred different free and open source software licences making licence compatibility a nightmare, but at the moment only a handful of open hardware licences (and let’s hope it stays that way). Andrew explains why licences are important, how to select a suitable licence for your project, and how to avoid getting too ambitious about what a licence can actually achieve. Andrew Katz is a lawyer with 21 years' experience in technology law. He has advised a number of open source software projects, and more recently has become active in open hardware licensing. He’s been involved in drafting the Solderpad Licence, and the CERN Open Hardware licence and has published and lectured widely. Andrew is Managing Partner of Moorcrofts LLP, a boutique corporate/tech law firm based in the Thames Valley. * Compered by: Dr Jeremy Bennett is founder and Chief Executive of Embecosm, a consultancy specializing in the development of open source compiler tool chains. — Sunday :: Workshops Some workshops will provide tools, boards and components etc. However, subject to demand this may involve an element of sharing and please feel free to bring along equipment and components, but note that you must be able to take full responsibility for your own personal safety and that of others in respect to these. Common sense must be exercised! * 3D modelling with Node.js Come along and learn how to use the open source Frameworx library and some simple Javascript code to quickly build beautiful and intricate 3D models ready to send to your printer or favourite 3D print agency. Fractal trees, structural trusses, jewellery, molecular models - if it's made of sticks Frameworx can model it! Ben Jefferson is a software engineer who initially trained as an architect (as in buildings not Ben was tech director at Leeds based web agency Sense Internet for 10 years and is now a freelance software engineer and IT consultant. His combined interest in structures, fractals, computing and innovation set Ben on a mission to model and 3D print a "Fractal Truss". After trying many different open source 3D modelling packages Ben found that none of them leant themselves to fast algorithmic generation of multi-million facet 3D models - thus Frameworx was born. Frameworx is now used all over the world including in labs working at the cutting edge of 3D printing technology. Workshop notes: bring along a laptop which has node.js and MeshLab (or similar STL file viewer) installed. A basic knowledge of Javascript coding is required. * A hands-on introduction to ESP8266: Sensors for the Home This workshop will introduce attendees to the popular low-cost WiFi enabled ESP8266 platform and go through a series of practical exercises focusing around a sensor device for the home. The device will get temperature/humidity, PIR activity and ambient light readings from the sensors on the purpose built demo board and report them back to the local “hub” and/or a cloud service. The exercises will run on the NodeMCU firmware, which is based on the Lua programming language. Before we get to the sensor readings part, there will be a quick introduction to the language and the platform with trivial exercises such as controlling GPIOs, using timers and various other fundamentals. Run by: OmerKilic. Workshop notes: bring along a laptop (Windows/Linux/OSX), your charger and a Micro USB cable. Please have your root/admin credentials handy in case you need to install any required software components during the workshop. * Learn KiCad by building an ESP8266 sensor board The ESP8266 is a WIFI gateway for microcontrollers. It can also have its firmware replaced with custom code that makes it even easier to build distributed sensors. KiCad is a free, open source, electronics CAD tool for designing circuit boards. It's recently undergone a rapid expansion and change due to CERN funding. Consequently lots of documentation is now out of date. In this workshop you'll learn how to use the new KiCad by building a circuit board that provides the ESP8266 with 3.3v regulated power from a 5v input (easily powered with a phone charger), headers for serial programming and a temperature or light sensor. Thanks to our workshop sponsors OSHPark, each participant will get vouchers to have their board made free of charge. Run by: Matthew Venn. Workshop notes: please bring a laptop computer with KiCad installed. Note that installation can take quite a while as it needs to be compiled from source code. * A £100 3D printed digital microscope, anyone? 3D printing brought incredible examples of Open Labware to life. My personal favourite (to be published soon): My colleague Richard Bowman's Raspberry Pi driven digital microscope, about the size of two fists, which allows a sample positioning of 1micrometer for X,Y and Z axis with its 3-printed flex-structures. Fun for you and Christmas for your kids! The kit (3D printed components and other bits including an optional raspberry pi) will be made available. The exact cost will depend on the 3D printing contractor I will use but should lie significantly under £100. At home you can extend the microscope in order to automate the three axes, if you wish. Run by: TobiasWenzel. Workshop notes: please bring a laptop and, if you like, your own raspberry pi. A steady hand will be beneficial for the assembly! * Arduino-based wearable electronics with the Seahorse The Seahorse is a flexible kit based on the Shrimping.it breadboard design and Cuttlefish PCB. The kit allows you to create a fully functional Arduino compatible computer, powering two LEDs and an IR receiver and transmitter. The board is fully extensible, making it easy to connect to a range of other peripherals via conductive thread. During this workshop, which lasts for the complete afternoon, you will solder up the circuit board, program it, and then sew it to a T-shirt. Run by: Dr Jeremy Bennett. Workshop notes: please bring a T-shirt or other item of clothing to which you wish to attach the seahorse. * Assembling the OSHCamp kit Get help with assembling this year's kit. Chelsea Back is a trainee engineer and is working towards a degree in Electronic Engineering. She enjoys building microcontroller projects and teaching people how to solder, and is currently getting to grips with schematic capture and PCB layout. Workshop notes: bring along the OSHCamp 2015 kit. NOTE: - There are separate tickets for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. - A light lunch and refreshments will be provided each day. - Please aim to arrive between 09:00 and 09:15 on the Saturday as the event will start at 09:20 prompt.

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OSHCamp 2015 sponsorship.
by Andrew Back 29 Jul '15

29 Jul '15

Hi All, Just a quick note to say that I'm looking for sponsors for this year's Open Source Hardware Camp, which will take place over the weekend of 26th & 27th September in Hebden Bridge. Boldport is working on another special PCB-based kit for this year, we have 13 great talks lined up and 6 workshops (room for 1 or 2 more if you're interested in running one). Should anyone have any suggestions please drop me a line and/or forward my details. Cheers, Andrew

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Simple article on Innovation through Open Source
by girish m 08 Jul '15

08 Jul '15

Hello, Please check out a simple article on Innovation through Open Source, and provide your valuable inputs. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/innovation-through-open-source-girish-maiya?… Thanks,Girish

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Galactic Fete
by Andy Bennett 05 Jul '15

05 Jul '15

Hi, Hi, A friend is organising this: http://www.galacticfete.org/ ----- A Summer Festival Celebrating the Mix of Space, Art and Maker Culture, Hands on. 18/19 July LONDON. ----- I thought it might be something that some of you peeps might be interested in. Under 13s go free. Regards, @ndy -- andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org http://www.ashurst.eu.org/ 0290 DA75 E982 7D99 A51F E46A 387A 7695 7EBA 75FF

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FabLab/RS DesignSpark PCB + Mechanical workshop, 15th July.
by Andrew Back 02 Jul '15

02 Jul '15

Hi All, RS and FabLab London are hosting a workshop on 15th July which may be of interest to some, which will provide an introduction to the — not open source, but free-to-download — EDA and CAD tools, DesignSpark PCB and DesignSpark Mechanical. http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fab-lab-master-3d-cad-pcb-design-in-one-day-r… Cheers, Andrew

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OSHCamp 2015 CFP.
by Andrew Back 02 Jun '15

02 Jun '15

Hello, This year Open Source Hardware Camp will be taking place over the weekend of 26 & 27th September and once again hosted at Hebden Bridge Town Hall (HX7 7BY). Proposals for talks and workshops are invited. There is no theme and topics may include, for example: * Open source hardware projects * Open development practices and principles * Novel/interesting/fun projects built using open source hardware * Tools (hardware and software) * Skills and techniques, e.g. PCB fab, DIY SMT assembly * Relevant technologies, e.g. SPI/I2C bus programming * ...something else relevant to the community! If you would like to give a talk on the Saturday and/or run a workshop on the Sunday please contact me off-list. **** Note that the deadline for submitting titles and abstracts is Saturday 27th June. If you would like to discuss ideas etc. please get in touch sooner, rather than later. **** Cheers, Andrew

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OSHUG #42 — Chips Pt. 3, Thursday 18th June.
by Andrew Back 28 May '15

28 May '15

Hello, Registration is now open for the June meeting, details of which can be found below. Cheers, Andrew // Event #42 — Chips Pt.3 (BERI, Do we need separate Hardware Construction languages? OpenTransputer) 18 June 2015, 18:00 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/42 This will be the third OSHUG meeting exploring the topic of silicon chip design, with talks on the Bluespec Extensible RISC Implementation, another asking whether we need separate hardware construction languages, and a third talk on an open source implementation of the Transputer. — BERI: An open RISC softcore for research and experimentation BERI (the Bluespec Extensible RISC Implementation) is a softcore processor jointly developed by SRI International and The University of Cambridge. It implements a superset of the MIPS III ISA in Bluespec, a high-level HDL and supports a fully open source, permissively licensed, software stack comprising the FreeBSD operating system and the LLVM compiler suite. This talk will describe the design of the BERI processor and its use. BERI was created to facilitate experimentation at the boundaries between CPU architecture, operating systems, and programming languages. It runs in Altera and Xilinx FPGAs, including the NetFPGA 10G board. At 100MHz, it is fast enough to use as a real computer (albeit a fairly slow one). The talk will discuss the BERI softcore, jointly developed by The University of Cambridge and SRI International and the associated open source software stack. BERI, the Bluespec Extensible RISC Implementation, is a 64-bit MIPS implementation in Bluespec, a high-level hardware description language. It implements the instruction set that debuted in the MIPS R4000 core in 1991, and therefore a set that is free of patents owing to its age. In spite of this, it is a relatively modern 64-bit architecture and is well supported by open source systems. The FreeBSD port to BERI required minimal changes, which were shipped as part of the FreeBSD 10.0 release, and runs unmodified userland 64-bit MIPS code. BERI can run in simulation at a speed acceptable for testing but not for general usage or in an FPGA at 100MHz. The BERI design supports multiple cores on a single FPGA and work is ongoing to support multicore across boards connected with a low-latency interconnect. Jonathan Woodruff received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas, and Masters and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Jonathan is a key developer of the BERI open-source research processor and its CHERI extension for memory safety. Jonathan is interested in hardware prototyping in FPGA to support full-system design exploration and has implemented a variety of flexible hardware components, including a many-core cache emulator, a multi-threaded ARM core, and many components of the BERI ecosystem. — Do we need separate Hardware Construction Languages? Modern Hardware Construction Languages, including Chisel, HML and the functional subset of Bluespec, provide powerful circuit description facilities for netlist printing in the style of the generate statements found in RTL. The earliest mainstream example was perhaps Lava. They do not support data-directed control flow, and so differ greatly from both conventional RTL and C-to-gates or scientific acceleration HLS (high-level synthesis) tools such as LegUp and Kiwi. In this talk, Greaves will illustrate the essential differences between these styles and discuss the motivation for separate languages, which is a surprising departure when one considers that a major selling point of Verilog and VHDL was they almost seamlessly integrated simulation, generative constructs and algorithm expression. He will also discuss the need for higher-level concurrency primitives and how they might be provided in hardware construction languages. David Greaves, PhD, MIET, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge with interests in compiler and hardware design. He has considerable industrial experience at the CTO/Chief Scientist level and has led the design of many hardware systems in areas such as professional audio and broadband access. His current research area is tooling for high-level simulation and energy instrumentation for system-on-chip based on transaction-level modelling (TLM). These enable new hardware architectures to be rapidly explored under real-world workloads, including accelerators for scientific workloads. — OpenTransputer: Reinventing a parallel machine from the past The OpenTransputer is a re-implementation of the Transputer, a pioneering microprocessor architecture first released in the 1980s. The original Transputer was considered revolutionary at its time for its integrated memory and serial communication links intended for parallel computing. Including memory and external links on the same chip made the Transputer essentially a computer on a chip. This allowed information systems to be designed at a higher level – the Transputer functioning as a building block for parallel computing networks. Over the last few years, with the shift to cloud computing there has been a trend in the world of computing of building large clusters of powerful computers that serve data to an ever-growing number of client devices, which themselves only feature tiny and low-power processors. These include mobile phones and tablets, but will soon also comprise every other device that connects to the internet, ranging from washing machines to cars. We think that the Transputer and its unique feature set make it an excellent processor for the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), specifically for the connected homes and wearable computing applications. The OpenTransputer maintains all the ideas of the original device for concurrency management and interprocess communication. However, the serial links that were used to connect multiple Transputers are replaced by a switch that routes messages between cores. Furthermore, we introduce a new I/O interface that is compatible with the vast majority of hardware components such as accelerometers and gyroscopes. Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt.

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