Olof Kindgren, director of the FOSSi (Free and Open Source Silicon) Foundation and a well-known advocate of open source tool flows, recently wrote up a kind of 2020 year in review article called “FOSSi Fever 2020”. In that piece, he dedicated a section to discussing QuickLogic’s proactive open source efforts and noted that we are “The {FPGA} company that will go down in the annals of history for being the first to do this…” We’d like to thank Olof for his recognition of our efforts and wish him and every user of open source tools the best as they target devices such as our EOS S3 platform with their innovative designs.

Clearly, using open source tools can bring significant benefits to us and our customers. Olof gives the example of how quickly and efficiently bugs can be identified, corrected, and then shared with the rest of the user community. This type of virtuous cycle means that open source tools are constantly evolving and improving, often with little to no effort on the part of the silicon vendor. He also notes that over the years, gaps in the toolflow have been steadily filled in by a variety of folks (including those in industry and academia, as well as by hobbyists) to the point where end-to-end design is now possible – even for full ASIC flows. Given that fact and that QoR is now excellent in most cases, we agree that this approach represents the future of the industry and, as you know, have fully embraced it.

Olof also shares lots of other interesting insights in the article. For those who are interested, the original piece can be found here: https://olofkindgren.blogspot.com/2021/02/fossi-fever-2020.html

It was also published by CHIPS Alliance.