Author: Roberto Innocenti

Forging the Future of Open Source Lab that provide us Power Architecture VM

Posted on by Roberto Innocenti

As we have published many times in our posts we use 2 Power9 VM for free thanks to the Open Source Lab at Oregon Stage University.

At 30th April 2025 the OSL published

critical and time-sensitive situation facing the Open Source Lab (OSL). Over the past several years, we have been operating at a deficit due to a decline in corporate donations. While the Oregon State College of Engineering (CoE) has generously filled this gap, recent changes in university funding makes our current funding model no longer sustainable. As a result, our current funding model is no longer sustainable.

On 9th May 2025 published

Following our OSL Future post, the community response has been incredible! Thanks to your amazing support, our team is funded for the next year. This is a huge relief and lets us focus on building a truly self-sustaining OSL.

Now they need support to build a truly self-sustaining OSL, they serve and help many of Open Source projects like our, so we publish their call.

https://osuosl.org/blog/osl-future-update

24 October Join us at NXP Technology Days Milano

Posted on by Roberto Innocenti

Next Tuesday 24 October our association meet you at NXP Technology Days Milano , we show our Powerboard Tyche prototype along with our Eclipse Notebook chassis.

Participation is free, registration needed, if you like you can do it below.

Continue reading →

Video: SFScon 2020: 202x Open Hardware Concrete Approach

Posted on by Roberto Innocenti

PPC64 Open ISA and A2I Core along with the PPC64 Open Hardware Notebook PCB and Libre-Soc project.

This year IBM released the A2I POWER processor core design and associated FPGA environment. In 2019 IBM opened the POWER Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). The Power Progress Community released the PCB of the Notebook Motherboard based on Power Architecture with Cern Open Hardware License. Libre-SOC is a software-hardware project that aims to deliver a physical POWER compliant SOC that comes complete with a CPU, GPU, VPU, and DDR controller. We will discover these concrete projects

Video: our Speak at OpenPOWER Summit NA 15 Sept 2020

Posted on by Roberto Innocenti

On 15th September 2020 at OpenPOWER Summit NA, there was many interesting speaks and projects, our speak

Around 6 years back, we started as a group of FOSS, PowerPC and Open Hardware enthusiasts, with beginning to work on PowerPC Notebook project which was designed around GNU/Linux using Open Hardware. We had very limited funding with limited skills to work. But our enthusiasm and motivation led us to reach fabrication stage for the motherboard. Finally this year we could successfully design its PCB with the help of collaborators and limited funding from donors. There were many challenges faced in this process. Since PowerPC processors have been around for more than 2 decades, but the current implementation on Notebook was difficult to take in the market. Coming to the performance in Big Endian mode is maximized in this with many software need to be patched. In future we plan to upgrade our PCB design to the more recent packaging technology for the processor. Also, with increasing collaborators, it would be possible to design more smaller and cheaper PowerPC board.

Our Speech at Open Source Summit. 15 days to donate 2600 euro left.

Posted on by Roberto Innocenti
Our PPC64 Motherboard Board Design
Download our Board Layout

The tentative deadline for Phase1B is 18th November so there are two weeks left to donate the remaining 2600 euros. If we will reach the goal, the PCB with SI bus simulation should be ready by the middle of December.

In this case in before the end of 2020 we start working on production of the Prototypes together with the Prototypes Donation Campaign.

We have to give a name to the motherboard, suggestions still remain open few days more on our forum.

Our Open Hardware license and endianness suggestions at OSS 2020

We have talked about Cern Open Hardware License and Endianness at Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference on Europe 27 Oct 2020

Cern Open Hardware License

Why not a software license such as GPL?
Hardware licenses are specific for hardware so they are written using the appropriate words: manufacturer, devices, CAD tool…

Why we choose the CERN Open Hardware Licence v1.2?
We think it offers a better protection for the licensor compared to other hw licenses such as TAPR Open Hardware License

So, who are the licensor and the licensee?
– In our project we (Power Progress Community) are the licensor and the licensee is the hardware producer.
The Licensee may manufacture or distribute Products
– Licensee could modify our work but the modification must be available under the same or equivalent license.
Licensor is protected
– Quality and responsabilities of the hardware belong to the licensee.

Other important notes
– Firmware, drivers and any other software would require their own license.
– Intellectual property belongs to the licensor.
– Documentation must be provided in the right format to be modified (using a CAD tool).

Continue reading →

Eureka! Here we have the Board layout! 15 days to donate 3660 euro left.

Posted on by Roberto Innocenti

We are happy to share to all the donors and followers the Board Layout of our PPC64 Notebook Motherboard!!!

The design of our board layout is meant to fit inside the Slimbook Eclipse body. The PCB Design which is currently being worked on using Mentor Xpedition.

In September 2020 we have published on our gitlab repository the Orcad source file with the latest version (v0.6) of the Electrical Schematics, you can go more deep on these board layout starting from the Orcad source.

Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Board Layout for Slimbook Eclipse Body – TOP
Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Board Layout for Slimbook Eclipse Body – BOTTOM
Download our Board Layout

The tentative deadline for Phase1B is 2th November so there are two weeks left to donate the remaining 3660 euros. If we will reach the goal, the PCB with SI bus simulation should be ready by the end of November.

In this case in December 2020 we will work on production of the Prototypes together with the Prototypes Donation Campaign.

We have to give a name to the motherboard, suggestions still remain open few days more on our forum

15 days more to donate 2000 euro left for the PCB

Posted on by Roberto Innocenti

Thanks to the donations already received, the work on the  PCB design can move forward and we estimate it could be completed by the End of September 2020. The date of publication of the PCB design will heavily depend on the results of the internal review process once we receive the first draft, hopefully it will not take long. The design of the PCB is meant to fit inside the Slimbook Eclipse body.

Picture by skeeze from Pixabay

As we were unable to reach the goal by August, we are forced to postpone the deadline of the current Donation Campaign (Phase 1A) to the 15th of September 2020. 

We kindly ask all followers, friends, and donors to concentrate their donations before the 15th September 2020, to ensure the end of Phase 1A to avoid an additional delay.

The plan is to deliver the PCB design with the end of Phase 1A, and right after that start Phase 1B “Fast SI bus simulations” on the 16th of September with a goal of € 5000 (around $ 5600). As a consequence, there will be no interruption in the donation campaign, it will transparently fade from Phase 1A to Phase 1B seamlessly.

Electrical Schematic v0.5 published

Posted on by Roberto Innocenti

In the last PCB update post we mentioned that a new version V. 0.5 ( June 2020) of the electrical schematics is in the works. After a few rounds of internal reviews, that new version is now finally ready to be publicly shared.

We have published in our repository this new version of the schematics.

Our gitlab repository

Thanks to the project’s supporters  (here a list of donors) we reached 76% of the goal of the current step.