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RISC-V: An Open Source Approach Accelerating EDA Implementations

By Shaun Giebel, OneSpin Solutions

The idea of free and open software has been around for decades and was grown out of a need to be able to easily enhance the software so it can do what you require of it. There was somewhat of an anti-establishment sentiment that advocated for open sharing over corporations controlling access of the software.

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Out of this came Richard M. Stallman’s book “The GNU Manifesto,” which was very much a call for uprising. Stallman declared: “Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way.” And with this the free software movement was born for the greater good. “Free” in this sense is about the users’ freedom to see, use and change the code, not necessarily that the price of the software is free. Over the years the freedom has more moved towards openness and has benefited from substantial contributions from millions of people worldwide.

For decades, corporations creating electronic design automation (EDA) tools have taken advantage of open source software for building and debugging commercial products. Most companies ship their products with open source packages that are required for their products to work, and many are leveraging innovations and resources from the open source community to produce valuable products that are sold for a profit… hopefully. So where would EDA be today without being able to leverage open source, and how many contribute back to the open source community?

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