Open-source hardware

Last year the European Space Agency made available its Leon-1 CPU core for open development. This was hailed as great step forward for the open-source licensing of 32-bit processor cores, and now, after nearly a year, the fruits of that labour have

Last year the European Space Agency made available its Leon-1 CPU core for open development. This was hailed as great step forward for the open-source licensing of 32-bit processor cores, and now, after nearly a year, the fruits of that labour have been tested under a variety of space-like conditions. The processor is intended to be used in a range of mission applications in the ESA's space projects.

The Leon-1 is a SPARC compatible core that is expected, in final versions, to run at 100MHz and is manufactured using a .35 micron CMOS process. It has been radiation tested and operates well within the parameters laid down by the SPARC V8 architecture manual. There is, to the unending joy of bearded Linux geeks everywhere, the very high likelihood that this open-source processor will be running some form of open-source software.

However, the Leo project could get some serious funding from traditional system-on-a-chip manufacturers in the mobile phone industry. Jiri Gaisler, the designer of the Leon architecture, is not naming any names just yet but he's had a number of expressions of interest. That old marketing chestnut 'Made from materials developed for the space program' never rang so true.
Jiri Gaisler's Leon homepage