By creating an open and collaborative environment, the CHIPS Alliance shares resources to lower the cost of development. Companies and individuals can work together to develop open source CPUs, various peripherals, complex IP blocks, tools and workflows.
The CHIPS Alliance is open to all organizations who are interested in collaborating on open source hardware or software tools to accelerate the creation of more efficient and innovative chip designs.
THe CHIPS Alliance is hosted by The Linux Foundation, a 501(c)6 non-profit.
Read on to learn more about participation in the CHIPS Alliance, and join us as we develop open source hardware designs and tools!
Getting Started
The CHIPS Alliance works in the open and welcomes all participants in our open source community. Here are the first things you should do to get involved.
Join our mailing lists
We recommend you join our mailing lists, as they are our primary means of communication. The CHIPS Alliance uses groups.io for our mailing lists. If you aren’t familiar with the process of joining groups, we have a tutorial on how to find and join our lists.
General mailing lists
- announce@lists.chipsalliance.org - This is our main list for publishing CHIPS Alliance announcements, such as workshop notifications and other updates. This is the best way to connect with us.
- technical-discuss@lists.chipsalliance.org - This is our main technical discussion list, for anything related to the Technical Steering Committee or for technical discussion with a scope beyond a single workgroup.
Workgroup mailing lists
Go to the Workgroups page for details, with mailing lists and meeting times.
Member mailing lists
In addition to the lists which are open to everyone, we have some special-purpose mailing lists for members and individual participants in the CHIPS Alliance. If you work for a CHIPS Alliance member, or have completed the individual participant registration form, please visit these lists and apply for membership.
- members@lists.chipsalliance.org - This is the main list for member information.
- marketing@lists.chipsalliance.org - This is the list for the CHIPS Alliance marketing committee, which is open to all members.
- We also maintain a legal mailing list for members' counsel to plan meeting times. Contact operations@chipsalliance.org with the name of your in-house legal counsel so we can add them to the Legal Committee list and invite.
Follow us on social
Follow us on our social channels: Twitter, LinkedIn.
Join our Slack
Join our Slack. You can get an invite here.
Subscribe to our calendar
We publish our workgroup and meeting calendar (ical). Please email mailto:operations@chipsalliance.org to request new events on the calendar, or to be added to an existing invite.
How to participate in the Technical Community
The CHIPS Alliance is home to multiple open source projects, which operate under the leadership of the Technical Steering Committee (TSC). These projects develop high quality open source hardware code (IP cores), interconnect IP (phy and logical protocols), and open source software development tools for design, verification, and more.
Our projects represent a diverse range of technologies and implementations, and are organized into workgroups. Each of these workgroups are represented through membership in the TSC, our primary technical governing body.
Participation in the development and decision-making process is open to anybody in the technical community. We strongly encourage developers to engage with our projects directly on a technical level.
About the Technical Steering Committee
The TSC is governed by the CHIPS Alliance Technical Charter. The Charter provides the TSC a great deal of latitude to organize itself and its processes in such a way that benefits our technical communities.
The TSC is comprised of technical representatives from CHIPS Alliance projects and workgroups, and led by a chairperson. All members of the technical community are welcome to subscribe to the TSC mailing list, and can participate in TSC meetings.
- Join the technical-discuss mailing list
- Join the TSC Slack channel (get a Slack invite)
How to participate as a Member
The CHIPS Alliance is a member-supported organization. Our members provide 100% of the financial support for our activities. Among other things, this enables us to provide operational, marketing, and legal support for our hosted projects, enables logisitical support for the ongoing operations of the Alliance, and allows us to host technical workshops to advance the state of the art of open hardware design.
First steps for new members
We have a number of additional lists and committees for members. Here are a few more things you should do.
- Send a vector version of your logo (.svg preferred) to operations@chipsalliance.org
- Encourage your coworkers to join the CHIPS Alliance mailing lists.
Please contact operations@chipsalliance.org for any questions or issues related to membership.
The Governing Board
The CHIPS Alliance is managed by a Governing Board, comprised of member representatives, the TSC chair, and the Marketing Committee chair.
Although the Governing Board delegates day-to-day technical governance to the TSC, it is responsible for setting the high-level policies which govern our projects. For example, the Governing Board works in close coordination with the Legal Committee to manage the Participation Agreement and the Technical Charter (including the IP Policy).
In addition, the Governing Board is responsible for managing the organization’s budget.
The Governing Board meets bi-weekly.
The Marketing Committee
The Marketing Committee is responsible for coordinating outreach activities and for responding to inbound requests. All CHIPS Alliance members are welcome to participate on Marketing Committee meetings and activities.
Please send an email to operations@chipsalliance.org to be added to the mailing list and calendar invitation.
The Legal Committee
The CHIPS Alliance Legal Committee is responsible for coordinating legal activity, including document and policy reviews. The Legal Committee makes recommendations to the Governing Board on such matters. All CHIPS Alliance members are welcome to designate a member of their in-house legal counsel to participate on this committee.
Please send an email to operations@chipsalliance.org to be added to the mailing list and calendar invitation.
Are you not a member, but interested in joining?
- Reach out to membership@chipsalliance.org with any questions.
- Organizations may complete the membership application.
I have a question or a problem!
- If you are a member or a participant in our technical community, email operations@chipsalliance.org
- If you would like to become a member, email membership@chipsalliance.org
- If you have a press inquiry, email pr@chipsalliance.org
- If your question isn’t covered by the above, email info@chipsalliance.org