Archives: Events


London Open Source Meetup for RISC-V

For our first RISC-V Meetup of 2023, we have a report on an attempt to create the world’s smallest RISC-V based AI processor and a tutorial on how to add a builtin function to GCC for RISC-V.

!!! Change of Arrangements !!!

This is now a purely virtual meeting, using this Zoom link.  All our speakers were coming from the Southampton area, and with the landslip at Hook, there are no trains between Southampton and London today.  Please register to attend in person here.

The Zoom link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterwards for discussion.

Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter.  If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject.  You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.

Creating the world’s smallest RISC-V based AI processor

Ren Chen, Ethan Lim, Amdadullah Md, Isaac Whale and Daniel Zelinka, University of Southampton

In previous years, this group has heard about the work of Southampton students developing small extensions to RISC-V to improve the performance of AI inference in low power contexts.  This earlier work used standard RISC-V cores under development by the OpenHW Group.  The work was carried out as group design projects of the MSc in Computer Systems Engineering.

For this year’s project we have attempted to combine the world’s smallest RISC-V Core, SERV, with our small AI extensions.  The goal is to create what could be the world’s smallest RISC-V based AI processor.  Suitable for use in very small, low power applications or to explore what is possible with massively parallel simple AI nodes at the edge.

But this is not just a talk about a project to create a novel AI processor. It is also a talk about how a project working to a tight timescale with demanding deliverables can go wrong, and what we did to rescue it and get useful results that will serve as a starting point for future projects.

Ren Chen, Ethan Lim, Amdadullah Md, Isaac Whale and Daniel Zelink are MSc students at the University of Southampton. Their project was supervised by Prof Mark Zwolinski and Dr Mark Vousden of the University of Southampton.  The industry advisors were Olof Kindgren, Jeremy Bennett and Will Jones.

Tutorial: Adding builtin functions to GCC for RISC-V

Nandni Jamnadas, Embecosm

Many low level features of architectures are implemented in GCC as builtin functions. Builtin functions look superficially like any C function, but are in fact intrinsic to the compiler and represented as patterns to be matched in the machine description.  Builtin functions are often used to access unique functionality of individual machine instructions, and , being integrated within the compiler, they are more efficient than using simple inline assembly code. For RISC-V, they offer an excellent way to expose the functionality of instruction set extensions to the C/C++ programmer.

In this tutorial, Nandni Jamnadas will explain how builtin functions are created in GCC, using examples from GCC for the OpenHW Group’s CV32E40Pv2 RISC-V core.

Nandni Jamnadas is a member of the Embecosm GNU compiler team, and also serves as the lead for the CORE-V GNU tool chain project. She is a UK Electronics Skills Foundation Scholar from Royal Holloway College, University of London.

 


AGM

This is our AGM, which we had to postpone from its regular date in October.

AGENDA

  1. Receive brief reports on the past year’s activities
  2. Election of new committee
  3. Presentation from the new Chair

The nominations received so far are:

  • Chair: Terence Eden
  • Treasurer: Dr Richard Miller
  • Membership Secretary: Dr Donal Stewart
  • Inclusion officer: Prof Cornelia Boldyreff
  • Web supremo: Simon Worthington
  • Early career/Student representatives: Pietra FerreiraRohit Goswami
  • Committee members: Andy Bennett (Events Coordinator), Dr Jeremy Bennett, Daniel Hall

Additional nominations are welcome. You have to be a BCS member to stand for Chair, Treasurer or Membership Secretary, but the other posts are open to members and non-member alike.

This event is online only and there is no need to register.  We will be using this Google Meet link for this event:

The livestream link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterward for discussion.

Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information, and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter.  If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject.  You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.

A vision for the future

Our proposed new Chair, Terence Eden, will be familiar to members, from his talk at our meeting on Open Source in Government.

The new Chair has some big challenges to tackle.

  • not enough (active) members
  • too London centric
  • lack of diversity
  • not meeting the core mission of promoting OSS

This is reflected in our experience over the past 2-3 years. Participants are less willing to travel to attend meetings in person, or even to participate remotely, relying instead on watching our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIUvLaxh5jZcEz_A2RBacXw).

We therefore need a plan for the future. We shall spend the next three months consulting our members on how OSSG should move forward. We don’t usually have a meeting in December, and our January meeting will be our regular RISC-V London meetup. Then in February we will have a meeting to launch the new plan for BCS OSSG.

This is an important time for OSSG, and we look forward to you participating in creating the plan for the future.


Open Source Hardware

July’s event is on the theme of Open Source in Hardware.

AGENDA
18:00 – Feel free to join the meeting online to chat with other participants
18:30 – Presentations
20:00 – Closing discussion

The event is online only.

For the online event, there is no requirement to register, you can just connect to livestream using BigBlueButton using this link.  Thank you to GWDG for providing hosting for the virtual meeting.  We are also recording the talks for later posting on our YouTube channel.

The livestream link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterward for discussion.

Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information, and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter.  If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject.  You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.

What if your first 3D printer is big and cheap?

Eugen Betke  completed his computer science study in 2015 and worked
as a researcher for the German Climate Computing Center until 2021. Now
he works as a software developer at the ECMWF. His key areas are
analysis and optimization of HPC-I/O. He is also interested in machine
learning and tries to combine both fields of research.

BlackEdge Nxt, Tiles and Blades, and Amaranth HDL — Rapid modular embedded FPGA design

Alan Wood 


London Open Source Meetup for RISC-V

For our summer meeting we are focusing on soft core implementations of RISC-V.

In the light of the current level of COVID-19, this event will be purely online.  There is no requirement to register, you can just connect to livestream using BigBlueButton using this link.  Thank you to GWDG for providing hosting for the virtual meeting.  We are also recording the talks for later posting on our YouTube channel.

The livestream link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterward for discussion.

Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter.  If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject.  You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.

The Wally RISC-V Core: The trials and tribulations of benchmarking

David Harris and Daniel Torres, Harvey Mudd College
Wally is a Verilog RISC-V soft core, developed by Prof David Harris and Daniel Torres to support the Advanced Digital Design course at Harvey Mudd College.  In this talk David Harris will describe the design of Wally, and the key design decisions.  Daniel Torres will then look at the challenges of benchmarking a core using Embench (www.embench.org) using event driven simulation. The outcome is a number of ideas for improving the Embench benchmark suite.

David Money Harris is a Professor of Engineering and Associate Director of the Engineering Clinic Program at Harvey Mudd College. Dr. Harris received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1999 and his S.B. and M. Eng. degrees from MIT in 1994. His research interests include high speed CMOS VLSI design and computer arithmetic. He is the author or coauthor of CMOS VLSI Design: A Circuits and Systems Perspective, Digital Design and Computer Architecture, Logical Effort, Skew-Tolerant Circuit Design, and Afoot and Afield Inland Empire. He holds a dozen patents, has written numerous papers, and has designed chips at Sun Microsystems, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Evans & Sutherland.

Daniel Torres is Academic Excellence Tutor at Harvey Mudd College. He has been leading the work to benchmark the Wally core using Embench.


Open Source in Video Games

March’s event is on the theme of Open Source in Video Games.

AGENDA
18:00 – Feel free to join the meeting in person for tea/coffee or online to chat with other participants
18:30 – Presentations
20:00 – Closing discussion

The event is hybrid. The in-person meeting takes place at BCS London, for which registration is required.

For the online event, there is no requirement to register, you can just connect to livestream using BigBlueButton using this link.  Thank you to GWDG for providing hosting for the virtual meeting.  We are also recording the talks for later posting on our YouTube channel.

The BCS meeting room (with team & coffee) and livestream link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterwards for discussion.

Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information, and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter.  If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject.  You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.

The videos are available in YouTube.

Rust in Games

Andy Thomason, Atomic Increment

Rust’s popularity as a robust programming language continues to increase.  In this talk, Andy Thomason will look at all the Rust resources that are now freely available.  There is now a very solid set of code that can be used.

Andy Thomason has worked in games from the 1970’s and developed tools and technology for many years including the optimiser for the Playstation 3 compiler.

These days he teaches Rust and helps startups with novel projects such as Crytocurrency engines and high speed data stores and helps with the Rust core SIMD project, generating a new libm for Rust.

Assessing Virtual Reality using Games

Richard Mitchell, University of Reading

Virtual Reality is a final year module in Computer Science at Reading with coursework where students create virtual worlds individually and then in groups utilising the Unity Game engine. The specifications for these are deliberately simple allowing students to interpret them very creatively, sometimes including a game element and often humour. This talk features various examples of student work over recent years.

Richard Mitchell is Professor of Cybernetics in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Reading, which he first attended as a student. He is a University Teaching Fellow which recognises his interests in teaching. He began his career teaching computing to Cybernetics students and in effect he now teaches cybernetics to computer scientists! His interests include cybernetics, Gaia theory, artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, as well as teaching mathematics and algorithms. He has had an interest in technology enhanced learning for many years: he is the Lead Educator for the FutureLearn MOOC Begin Robotics; he was supervisor of the best KTP project in 2021 in which Red-Whale’s teaching materials for medical practioners was transformed from face to face to online delivery.


Open Source and Inclusivity

This is our annual meeting on Inclusivity held in partnership with BCS Women.  We’re delighted to have three outstanding speakers.

AGENDA
18:00 – Feel free to join the meeting to chat with other participants
18:30 – Presentations
20:00 – Closing discussion

With all our speakers joining remotely, the event is purely virtual. There is no requirement to register, you can just connect to livestream using BigBlueButton using this link.  Thank you to GWDG for providing hosting for the virtual meeting.  We are also recording the talks for later posting on our YouTube channel.

The  livestream link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterward for discussion.

Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information, and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter.  If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject.  You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.

The videos of the evening are available on YouTube.

Cornelia Boldyreff

Prof Cornelia Boldyreff is Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. She was previously the Associate Dean (Research and Enterprise) at the School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering at the University of East London from 2009 – February 2013.  She has over 25 years’ experience in software engineering research and has published extensively on her research in the field.  She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a founding committee member of the BCS Women Specialist Group, a committee member of the BCS e-Learning Specialist Group, and a past chair of the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. She has been actively campaigning for more women in STEM throughout her career.

Together with Miriam Joy Morris and Dr Yasmine Arafa, Cornelia founded the start-up, ebartex Ltd, and together they are developing a new digital bartering currency, ebarts.

Elizabeth Leake

Dr Elizabeth Leake is the director of research computing at Boise State University in the U.S. Since 2008, she has served as an external relations consultant, international correspondent and advocate for the high-performance computing and open source communities. In 2012, she founded STEM-Trek, a global, grassroots, nonprofit organization that supports scholars from regions and demographics that are typically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics academics and careers. As a program director, Leake has mentored hundreds of early-career professionals who are breaking cultural barriers in an effort to accelerate scientific and engineering discoveries.
She will talk about STEM-Trek’s genesis and the amazing scholars she has had the honor to serve along the way.

Claire Knight

Dr Claire Knight is a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Netlify where she is involved in building out and supporting the ecosystem around Jamstack. As was recently announced, this includes running an open source team. She has worked remotely for the last several years, including as a Senior Engineering Manager at GitHub which focuses on being the home for all developers. In this talk she will share some of the experiences of being in and around OSS from a personal and professional perspective. This will include some things to think about for running projects and getting involved.

Ann Barcomb

Dr Ann Barcomb is an assistant professor at the Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary. Her previous post was at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Dr. Barcomb received her PhD from the University of Limerick, Ireland, in 2019, with a specialization in software engineering, and a master’s in information systems from Maastricht University, The Netherlands. In the course of her industry career, she worked as a software developer for multiple firms and as a community manager for RIPE NCC. From the beginning, she has been active in free/libre/open source software, organizing events, speaking at practitioner conferences, and writing for practitioner outlets. Her research is characterized by a desire to understand and generalize processes and practices within free/libre/open source software communities, to facilitate the exchange of knowledge between practitioners.

Dr Barcomb will be speaking on Ageism in Software Development.


Open Source Strategy and Governance

March’s event on the theme of Open Source Strategy and Governance.

AGENDA
18:00 – Feel free to join the online meeting to chat with other participants
18:30 – Presentations
20:00 – Closing discussion

The event is hybrid, in-person meeting takes place at the London offices – registration is required (see tickets above). For the online event, there is no requirement to register, you can just connect to livestream using BigBlueButton using this link.  Thank you to GWDG for providing hosting for the virtual meeting.  We are also recording the talks for later posting on our YouTube channel.

The BCS meeting room and livestream link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterward for discussion.

Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information, and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter.  If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject.  You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.

Aligning open source governance with your organisation’s business objectives

Gilles Gravier (Wipro)

Governance is a key element of your open source activities. It should be governed by your open source strategy, and it should be done in ways that directly support your corporate business objectives. In this session, we’ll explore what kind of business objectives can be supported by an open-source strategy and those that are specifically the object of a strategically defined governance model. 

 

The Security Risk of Using Open Source Software

St. John Harold

A key aspect of Governance is understanding the risks associated with using Open Source Software. This session will focus on what we have defined as compliance risks, explaining our reasons for linking compliance with security within the OSS domain covering the compliance of confidentiality, integrity, availability but also looking at privacy and the certification of OSS. This is based on recent research into the wider area of OSS risks. 

 

The challenges and opportunities of building open source communities in the highly regulated financial services industry

James McLeod (FINOS, The Linux Foundation)
James McLeod is the Director of Community at FINOS, The Linux Foundation, with an extensive career in software engineering and running open source communities. James joins the group to talk through the challenges and opportunities of building open source communities in the highly regulated financial services industry. James will also share his screen and attempt a live, open source in finance, demo!

 


Continuous integration and development with Kubernetes

February’s virtual event, on the theme of Continuous Integration and Development using Kubernetes.

AGENDA
18:00 – Feel free to join the online meeting to chat with other participants
18:30 – Presentations
20:00 – Closing discussion

There is no requirement to register, you can just connect to livestream using BigBlueButton using this link.  Thank you to GWDG for providing hosting for this meeting.

We are also recording the talks for later posting on our YouTube channel.

The livestream link will be open from 18:00 for networking, and the event will start at 18:30 prompt. We’ll keep the link open afterward for discussion.

Not a BCS member? Don’t worry! Our monthly newsletter provides the latest news, information, and events in the world of IT. We’re here to keep you updated! Sign up today at campaign.bcs.org/bcs-supporter.  If you would just like to be added to the friends of the Open Source SG mailing list, then please send an email to ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk with subscribe in the subject.  You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing unsubscribe-ossgnonmem@lists.bcs.uk.
The presentations are now available on YouTube.

On-premise Kubernetes deployment with Rancher

Piotr Kasprzak

Tekton pipeline based VM provisioning in Kubernetes cluster.

Vishal Anand

Slides

 

Self-Hosted Serverless Computing On Kubernetes

Serverless is an execution model for cloud computing that has gained much influence in industry and research by offering infinitely scaling compute capabilities, uncomplicated maintenance and pay-as-you-go pricing. Jonathan Decker talks about running self-hosted serverless platforms on Kubernetes; what is serverless and what makes serverless and Kubernetes such a good match. Furthermore, he describes the current state of research in the area of serverless as well as his own observations on open-source servleress platforms.

Jonathan Decker