“Open source EDA (Electronic Design Automation) can be a game changer when it comes to building a more resilient and accessible chip ecosystem”, says Christophe Alexandre. Together with Noam Cohen he created Naja, an open source EDA tool.

The semiconductor industry is highly complex and globally interconnected, which makes it fragile. Open source can contribute to resiliency in what traditionally has been a closed field.

Christophe: “Open source EDA tools make it easier for newcomers to get started by providing solid, accessible foundations that don’t require massive initial investment or deep legacy knowledge, and it can bridge chip design with other fast moving fields like machine learning and AI. It can accelerate the creation of a local semiconductor ecosystem by breaking down the traditional barriers and opening up innovation. So trying to grow a new EDA ecosystem in Europe just by using the old closed and behind the gates model just doesn’t seem realistic anymore. If we want to build something resilient, open source needs to be a core part of the strategy.”

Links
Naja
Naja Github
Naja Pyhton
Naja documentation

NGI Zero projects
Naja
Naja-DNL

Learn more about Naja:
Christophe at FOSDEM 25 about Naja Python

Other projects and topics mentioned
Yosys
Coriolis
OpenROAD
Klayout
IHP Open source PDK
TinyTapeout

NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative.

The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet.

The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

LibreQoS greatly improves the quality of experience of internet connections. It was born out of necessity during the COVID pandemic when massively increased internet usage resulted in intermittent package loss. Robert Chacón, CEO of LibreQoS and operator of a small ISP that provides internet to under-served communities, noticed how it affected his customers’ ability to work from home and do online learning. In response, LibreQoS was created to fight bufferbloat and latency issues by prioritizing interactive sessions like video calls over, say, downloading large files.

In this episode we speak to Robert, Herbert Wolverson (Chief Product Officer), and Frantisek Borsik (Chief Operating Officer). They talk about how they open sourced LibreQoS in the hopes of helping other small ISPs who bring internet to the under-served, and their surprise at the rapid rise in popularity with deployments in 58 countries. They provide insight in the world of ISPs, and how stable internet connections aren’t just about good gaming experiences but can actually save lives.

In loving memory of Dave Täht
Sadly, Dave Täht passed away days after the recording of this episode. Dave was Chief Science Officer at LibreQoS and made fundamental contributions to FQ-CoDel, CAKE, and LibreQoS to improve the internet for everyone. He worked to make real-time communication available everywhere and insisted his code be free and open source so it would truly benefit everyone. He is remembered by many for who he was and the lives he touched with his work on his memorial page.

Links
LibreQoS
LibreQoS website
LibreQoS source code
LibreQoS documentation

NGI Zero projects
LibreQoS
LibreQoS 2.1

Learn more about LibreQoS:
Great explanation of how LibreQoS works by Herbert Wolverson at an APNIC webinar.
Interview with Robert Chacón including a demo of LibreQoS’s dashboard by The BrothersWISP at WISPAPALOOZA 2024.

Other projects and topics mentioned
CTN an ISP in Malawi
OpenWRT a Linux distribution for routers and embedded devices.
FQ-CoDel: a hybrid packet scheduler and Active Queue Management algorithm.
Cake a comprehensive queue management system the bufferbloat project has been working on since 2013.
MikroTik
Alta Labs
Toke Høiland-Jørgensen
Karlstad University

NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative.

The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet.

The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

“The consumer electronics industry works differently than people actually think”, says Armijn Hemel creator of DeviceCode. Behind the different brands and casings is often the same hardware, created by a single Original Design Manufacturer. But the disclosure of security vulnerabilities is mostly focused on single devices. So when a CVE is published for device A from vendor X it conceals that the security flaw may also exist in a similar device of a different vendor. DeviceCode collects structured technical information about consumer devices to reveal these hidden patterns of the industry in order to improve security.

Demystifying the electronics industry can also be a step toward increasing the local production of electronics. Reasons to opt for local manufacturing are the vulnerability of global supply chains, environmental impact, worker rights, software security and preventing backdoors. A better understanding of the industry could inspire a bottom up approach to a more diversified electronics industry.

Links
DeviceCode repositories:
Code
Data

NGI Zero projects
DeviceCode
And also mentioned: VulnerableCode

If you are interested in Armijn’s knowledge about Open Source Software supply chain management (briefly mentioned at the end of the podcast) watch the NGI Zero webinar with Armijn: Open Source in (Consumer) Electronics Supply Chains (Episode 1 of a 4-part series The Ins and Outs of Open Software Supply Chain)

Other projects and talks mentioned
The Open Wrt hardware device: OpenWrt One

Talks on the hardware supply chain by Andrew “bunnie” Huang
Supply Chain Security: “If I were a Nation State…” at BlueHat IL, 2019.
An Alternative to the American way of Innovation at TEDxPickeringStreet.
NGI Zero webinar about IRIS: (Infra-Red, In-Situ) inspection of silicon.

NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative.

The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet.

The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.