Those who know me or have or have attended some of my earlier (pre TVRRUG) OSHUG talks will be aware that I frequently work with Xmos multicore micro-controllers among my many other favourite technologies. Xmos are a UK chip design company (like ARM) who are doing a lot of work to push the technology envelope and they extensively use Opensource tool chains along with their community opensource libraries at xcore (https://github.com/xcore). They have recently made efforts to widen their product lines and lower the barrier to entry, if you are interested in exploring XS1 technology and perhaps adding to their opensource developer pool you might be interested in a special promotion they are running called Startkit where they are giving away some great simple development boards for folks that may have a good idea to try out on them.