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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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OSHUG #41 — Wiring the Internet of Things with Raspberry Pi & Node-RED, Thursday 21st May.
by Andrew Back 26 Apr '15

26 Apr '15

Hello, Registration is now open for the March meeting, which will take the form of an afternoon workshop providing an introduction to Node-RED. if you are planning on attending, registering sooner rather than later is highly recommended. However, please don't register if you there is a chance you won't make it, as spaces are limited and it would be a terrible shame if some miss out due to the event being booked up, then on the day we end up with empty chairs. Cheers, Andrew // Event #41 — Wiring the Internet of Things with Raspberry Pi & Node-RED 21 May 2015, 12:30 - 18:30 at Fab Lab London, Off Old Jewry, 1 Frederick’s Place, London, EC2R 8AE. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/41 Node-RED is a visual tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. Used together with Raspberry Pi it provides a compact, powerful platform that is able to read sensors, control outputs, and send and receive data to and from the Web and other systems. This workshop will provide an introduction to Node-RED and integrating simple sensors and outputs, applying basic processing and publishing data to the Web. No prior experience with either Node-RED or electronics is required. However, while not strictly necessary, some experience of JavaScript would be beneficial as this is used to implement custom functionality within Node-RED. The introduction to Node-RED will be presented by Andy Stanford-Clark. Andy Stanford-Clark is a Distinguished Engineer in IBM's global Internet of Things team. He is an IBM Master Inventor with more than 40 patents. Andy is based at IBM's Hursley Park laboratories in the UK, and specialises in the Internet of Things, remote telemetry, energy monitoring and management, Smart Metering and Smart Grid technologies. He has a particular interest in home energy monitoring, home automation and driving consumer behaviour change. Andy has been working on what we now call the Internet of Things for more than 15 years: he co-developed the MQTT messaging protocol in 1998. Andy has a BSc in Computing and Mathematics, and a PhD in Computer Science. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle, an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia, and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. Please bring a laptop and, if you have a Raspberry Pi, bring this along with any useful sensors and LEDs. However, note that boards and sensors etc. will also be made available for use by those who do not have these. An SD card image will be provided with Node-RED and associated software pre-installed. Note: Please aim to arrive by 12:15 as the workshop will start at 12:30 prompt. Jointly hosted by the BCS OSSG, IBM UK and OSHUG. With support from the Knowledge Transfer Network and hardware sponsored by RS DesignSpark.

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New kindle book on open source hardware
by girish m 28 Mar '15

28 Mar '15

Hi All, Please check out the new kindle book on open source hardware and provide your feedback. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T6JXDCS Thanks,Girish

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Events
by Mark.itto 23 Mar '15

23 Mar '15

Hi, i went to the event 39 Id like to know where can i find the presentations? are they put online? id be very interested on seeing this again. kind regards. M

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OSHUG #40 — Hackerspace/makerspace/fablab panel discussion, Thursday 16th April.
by Andrew Back 21 Mar '15

21 Mar '15

Hello, Registration is now open for the April meeting, details of which can be found below. Cheers, Andrew // Event #40 — Hackerspace/makerspace/fablab panel discussion 16 April 2015, 17:30 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London,WC2E 7HA. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/40 For the fourtieth meeting we will be hosting a panel discussion which will explore the organisation, operation, challenges and benefits of creative spaces known as hackerspaces, makerspaces and fablabs. There will be representatives from Makespace Cambridge, South London Makerspace, So Make It (Southampton), Fab Lab London, London Hackspace and the UK's innovation agency, Innovate UK. — Makespace Cambridge Dr Laura James is co-founder and Director of Makespace Cambridge, a non-profit community inventing shed and hackspace. She is currently consulting on a variety of technology and innovation activities. Laura has worked in technology and leadership roles in a wide variety of organisations. After R&D work at AT&T Labs in both Menlo Park and Cambridge, Laura developed high speed optical networks with Intel Research for her PhD. She was the first employee and VP Engineering at AlertMe.com, developing an easy to use innovative connected home platform and security system. At True Knowledge, Laura was part of the senior management team leading the company through a pivot, to apply their unique semantic technology to next generation search, creating Evi, a revolutionary conversational search app. Laura has also worked as Chief Operating Officer at CARET, a dynamic innovation department of the University of Cambridge, developing open source systems to support teaching and research. Most recently, Laura was CEO of Open Knowledge, a civil society organisation dedicated to opening up knowledge to empower people. Laura is an advisor to Open Knowledge, Product Health, Good Night Lamp, and the ContentMine. Laura holds Masters and PhD degrees in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, received the Royal Academy of Engineering Leadership Award and a NESTA Crucible Fellowship, and is a Chartered Engineer. — South London Makerspace Tom Lynch is a Designer/Maker based in London, after completing his MA at the Royal College of Art he went on to start Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire at the London College of Communication where he now works as a Physical Computing Specialist Technician. Living in South London, Tom is a founder and trustee of South London Makerspace, a social, community workshop in Herne Hill. — So Make It Jem Gillam is an iOS programmer turned stay at home mum, and a trustee at So Make It. She has always had an interest in programming and hardware hacking, her first projects involving circuit bending and wearable electronics. Her current project is working with a large team to build a life size remote control Dalek, which meant finally learning to use the power tools at the makerspace! — Fab Lab London Tony Fish is co-founder of Fab Lab London, investor, entrepreneur and an author with a background in electronics, computing and design. — London Hackspace Jonty Wareing is co-founder and trustee of London Hackspace, and co-founder of Electromagnetic Field. He is currently hacking on IRC Cloud after three years at Lumi, and five years at Last.fm. — Innovate UK Nikos Pronios is Lead Technologist for Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) at Innovate UK which he joined in early 2014. He has a diverse background in the ICT sector with experience in US and Europe, both in the industry and academia. After obtaining his PhD from the University of Southern California, he worked for Bell Communication Research in New Jersey, before moving to INTRACOM in Greece. Nikos has worked in various industry positions covering before moving to INTRACOM in Greece. Nikos has worked in various industry positions covering civilian and defence sectors, and he is currently using his diverse experience of more than 20 years to help organisations innovate and compete. — Chaired by: Dr Jeremy Bennett is Founder and CEO of Embecosm, an open source compiler and silicon chip modeling consultancy, that are a strong supporter of the makerspace movement as sponsor of So Make It, Chip Hack and regular workshops that serve to introduce people to embedded computing. Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. //

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Open Source Hardware projects in Google Summer of Code
by Alex Bradbury 17 Mar '15

17 Mar '15

Hi all, Student applications are now open for Google Summer of Code <http://google-opensource.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/gsoc-2015-student-applicati…>. This gives the opportunity for selected students to get paid a $5500 stipend to work on open source projects over the summer. The lowRISC project to produce a fully open-source System-on-Chip was fortunate enough to be accepted as a mentoring organisation, working in collaboration with a number of our friends in the wider open source software and hardware community. We have project ideas covering pretty much every part of the hardware/software stack <http://www.lowrisc.org/docs/gsoc-2015-ideas/> with a wide range of implementation languages (there's more opportunity to write JavaScript than you might expect for a hardware-focused project!). Projects include extending Cocotb (showcased at a a previous OSHUG), implementing place and route for the reverse engineered iCE40 FPGA to produce a fully open source compilation flow, using tagged memory in LLVM, and much more. You may remember I gave a talk about lowRISC at a previous OSHUG meeting. I'd really appreciate any help in spreading the word to students who might be interested. More information about GSoC is available at <https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2015>. Other participating mentoring organisations that may be of interest to oshuggers are: * BeagleBoard http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org2/google/gsoc2015/beagleboard * MinnowBoard http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org2/google/gsoc2015/minnowboard * Openwall (has a few FPGA-based projects) http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org2/google/gsoc2015/openwall Best, Alex

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BBC Micro Bit
by Andy Bennett 12 Mar '15

12 Mar '15

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31834927 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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3rd wireless related talk for next week.
by Andrew Back 11 Mar '15

11 Mar '15

Hello, Unfortunately, Will and Miles from Wireless Things are now unable to present at next week's meeting, which means we have a spare slot. Anyone have a wireless related talk they would like to give? Needn't be long — even just a 5 min talk would be fine. Cheers, Andrew

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Energy Efficient Computing Workshop, 11 March 2015, Manchester
by Jeremy Bennett 04 Mar '15

04 Mar '15

Hi all, The InnovateUK Energy Efficient Computing Group is running a two day conference and workshop at the Manchester Museum of Science & Industry. Both the conference (10 March) and workshop (11 March) are free to attend. https://connect.innovateuk.org/web/eec/events OSHUG members may be particularly interested in the workshop Embecosm is running using the open source Crazyflie 2.0 quadcopter. We'll be trying to improve the efficiency of flying this design, using the MAGEEC energy measurement board (an open hardware design). Best wishes, Jeremy -- Tel: +44 (1590) 610184 Cell: +44 (7970) 676050 SkypeID: jeremybennett Twitter: @jeremypbennett Email: jeremy.bennett(a)embecosm.com Web: www.embecosm.com PGP key: 1024D/FB4754E1 2009-03-20

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South London Makerspace.
by Andrew Back 03 Mar '15

03 Mar '15

Hello, Anyone on the list involved with, or have a contact at, South London Makerspace? I seem to recall speaking with someone about this, but forget who! Cheers, Andrew

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