Peter Clarke writes, at EETimes.com . . .

“Open-source licensing of 32-bit processor cores is gaining ground, as the European Space Agency recently made available its Leon-1 CPU core. Though the core has yet to be fully tested in hardware, its VHDL source code has been downloaded at least 150 times since Feb. 17 when the debugged core went up on the agency's Web site.”

“Some observers suggest that the free availability of Leon-1 and of another 32-bit architecture, OpenRISC 1000 [* see link *], could undermine commercial core licensors like ARM Ltd., MIPS Technologies and Sun Microsystems. Indeed, Leon's designer, Jiri Gaisler, said he's already been approached by “a very big mobile phone company” looking to cut processor costs. He would not name the company.”

* Read full story *

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.