Psstt... want to know a SEcRVet? I just posted the first article (of hopefully many) about one of the tricks involved to make the award-winning SERV, the world's smallest RISC-V CPU. Don't tell anyone! blog.award-winning.me/2026/07/serv...

Tired of reading yet another lukewarm take on access to AI models? Want to read some real news instead? Well, you're in luck, because I just made a write-up about the latest release of the award-winning SERV, the world's smallest RISC-V CPU. blog.award-winning.me/2026/06/serv...

SERV 1.4.0

SERV 1.4 is finally released. Actually, it has been out since October last year but I've been so busy that I never got around to make a prop...

blog.award-winning.me

RIP Jimmy. I hope you enjoy your pie up in the sky. 😔 www.bbc.com/news/article...

Reggae legend Jimmy Cliff dies, aged 81

The musician was known for hits like You Can Get It If You Really Want and I Can See Clearly Now.

bbc.com

You know what just happened? A new version of Edalize dropped. github.com/olofk/edaliz... For those who don't know, Edalize is a Python library that provides a common interface to 40+ EDA tools. It is used in FuseSoC and other projects as the build backend but can also be used stand-alone.

SERV made it into Nature again! This time in a atomic-layer-thick MoS2 process, which means that the award-winning SERV is not only the world's smallest RISC-V CPU, but also the world's thinnest RISC-V CPU. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Love seeing SERV keep turning up in new technologies!

A RISC-V 32-bit microprocessor based on two-dimensional semiconductors - Nature

A RISC-V microprocessor capable of executing standard 32-bit instructions has been designed with 5,900 MoS2 transistors and a complete standard cell library based on 2D semiconductor technology.

nature.com

m.youtube.com/watch?v=qhKj... The guest lecture I gave on open source silicon at UCM is now online. I hope it can serve as an introduction to open source silicon for more people. Tried to do shout-outs to lots of FOSSi projects but there are of course many more that I didn't have time to talk about.

Open Source Silicon: New tools for a new generation. Olof Kindgren. Qamcom Research & Technology

The semiconductor industry creates some of the most advanced objects ever made and, and many of the largest companies in the world are increasingly starting to create chips themselves. A the same time, it's a comparatively small and extremely conservative industry, not least when compared to the neighboring field of software design. But just like what happened 20 years ago for software, when the whole field was revitalized from the massive uptake of open source, we see the same thing happening for chip design. The barriers of entry are torn down and chip design is becoming faster, cheaper and more accessible for small companies and individuals. As students, you will enter a job market that is bustling with new possibilities if you know where to look. This presentation will guide you through some of the things that has been done and can be done with open source silicon, to give you new tools for a new generation.

m.youtube.com

#nowspinning Must admit I think JA are a bit pretty overrated. The best ones on the album all come from The Great Society, perhaps except for Plastic Fantastic Lover.

Woohoo!!! The box of confetti I ordered from China has arrived. They were also nice put a sticker and some kind of circuit board inside.

#nowspinning Lighthouse. Had this one for ages but never listened to it. The Eight Miles High cover was really good!

Second cheerleading practice. My back survived this time, but my butt is broken. I'll say that next time, Sally can fucking bring herself up. Also, learned to do cartwheels for the first time in my life. Let's see if I can do handsprings without killing myself.

Youngest kid was not impressed by my new haircut. She said I look like a small child with a beard...which honestly is how I feel most of the time, so she's not wrong.

Note from my book, Rude Girls: Women in 2 Tone and One Step Beyond (skabook.com): Blondie’s Chris Stein tried to involve the Specials in recording The Tide Is High: “I asked the Specials to back Debbie up … and they didn’t wanna do it! … Lynval wanted to do it!” #ska #blondie #music #reggae #2Tone

Not to brag or anything, but I just managed to connect to a wifi network from the new laptop I got in November. Ok, it only works with unencrypted networks but I'm sure I'm only a couple of kernel options away from getting WPA working.

Ok, this one was new. I'm used to external displays not being detected, but for some reason Ubuntu insists that there's an 'Unknown 35"' monitor connected which clearly doesn't exist. No idea where it gets this information from.

Had my first ever cheerleading practice today and I loved it! Unfortunately my back didn't. It was apparently not a good idea for a 40+ programmer with zero previous experience to try doing a toe touch jump on the first practice. Who would have thought?

Cables must be the horniest creatures in the world. You put them nice and tidy in a box and as soon as you look away they get tangled up in an orgy.

Alright folks! A new version of FuseSoC was just released. A couple of fixes and new features, but no dramatic changes. This hopefully also means less things that can break so updating should be smooth. github.com/olofk/fuseso...

My girlfriend discovered Lambrini Girls last night and I love it. They are great! Tons of energy and anger. And they are coming here to Sweden this spring. Won't miss!

Turns out our local library also offers a free streaming service with a fantastic selection of movies. I finally got to see the Poly Styrene biopic I'm a Cliché that I have been trying to see for years. And yes, it was great. Can highly recommend. www.polystyrenefilm.net

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché

The death of punk icon and X-Ray Spex frontwoman Poly Styrene sends her daughter on a journey across the world and through her mother’s archives to reconcile their fraught relationship in this new doc...

polystyrenefilm.net

With the rest of the family enjoying christmas music and me rather jumping out of a window than hearing Last Christmas or Jingle Bell Rocks one more time, we had to make some compromises. So this year I introduced Yellowman's christmas album with hits like Jamaica, Jamaica, we don't have no snow.

22 years ago today one of the greatest died In memory of Joe Strummer 🖤 ... gone but not forgotten... 📸 Keith Bernstein #punk #punks #punkrock #punklegend #joestrummer #theclash #punkrockhistory #history #otd

Woohoo! Just released a new version of Subservient, the ASIC macro for quick and easy SERV integration into your projects. github.com/olofk/subser... Realized with shock and horror that it's almost four years since the last release.

GitHub - olofk/subservient: Small SERV-based SoC primarily for OpenMPW tapeout

Small SERV-based SoC primarily for OpenMPW tapeout - olofk/subservient

github.com

My colleague ported Yocto to the Banana Pi F3. Very nice if you want to play with a reasonably priced RISC-V SBC that supports the vector extensions version 1.0 www.qamcom.com/building-yoc...

Building your own Yocto image for Banana Pi F3

Open source Building your own Yocto image for Banana Pi F3 Yocto is the de facto standard for running Linux on embedded systems, and this is of course true for RISC-V as well. We are happy to s...

qamcom.com

Ha! I managed to pair a wireless device without even looking at the manual! Well, technically my girlfriend was reading the manual aloud step by step to make it easier for me to follow. But still!

Note to self. Before bidding on a mixing console next time, check the actual size of it. That will save you an extra trip to get a bigger car and then another one because the lid still didn't fit in the bigger car and now you have no clue where to even put this monster. It was really cheap though..

Pro-tip. Celebrate another country's holiday. No one celebrates Thanksgiving in Sweden, so when we did it a couple of years ago we could just invite all our friends and have fun because no one had obligations to their families.

Showers are the most underrated R&D tool. I just realized how I can save 5-8 FFs in SERV. Need to try it first though. It will add some extra combinatorial logic that might outweigh the benefits.

Another package in the mail and now my collection of Italian doom albums just doubled.

Does anyone else have this problem where you get a new computer and then spend a week finding the perfect hostname for it before you can turn it on for the first time?

Look what just arrived in the mail from messaband.com