Open-Source Processors: Bringing Silicon Back to Silicon Valley?

event page: https://vlab.org/events/open-source-p...
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Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Stanford Faculty Club - Stanford University
439 Lagunita Drive, Stanford, CA 94305
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Moderator
Linley Gwennap, President, The Linley Group

Panelists
Krste Asanovic, Co-Founder and Chief Architect, SiFive
Art Swift, VP Marketing and Business Development, Esperanto Technologies
John Heinlein, Vice President, Chief of Staff to the CEO, ARM
Stefan Dyckerhoff, Managing Director, Sutter Hill Ventures

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The open-source approach to developing new technologies is entering a new realm, with the potential to change an entire industry. For years, open-source has lived exclusively in the software domain. From Linux to GitHub, open-source software has become a powerful way to bring new products and solutions to market. This open-source transformation in software is now making its way to silicon, with far-reaching implications.

Open-source has the potential to be as big a game-changer in silicon as it has been in software. Companies like Sifive and Esperanto are already commercializing new architectures based on the open-source approach, and new open-source communities like the RISC V consortium are having a huge impact.

In this event, our panel will discuss the promise of open-source CPU architectures and the challenges faced in building complete system-on-a-chip (SoC) products around an open-source Instruction Set Architecture (ISA).

What will motivate chip companies and customers to embrace open-source hardware?
What ecosystem components are needed for successful commercialization?
Which domains will benefit by embedding an open-architecture?
What business models can succeed in this new ecosystem?