Skip to content
Longterm Wiki

CHIPS Alliance Brings on Rob Mains as New Executive Director | CHIPS Alliance

web
chipsalliance.org·chipsalliance.org/news/chips-alliance-brings-on-rob-mains...

This press release announces a leadership appointment at CHIPS Alliance, an open hardware consortium. It is tangentially relevant to AI safety through its focus on open-source hardware and chip design democratization, which relates to compute governance and hardware accessibility debates in AI development.

Metadata

Importance: 8/100press releasenews

Summary

CHIPS Alliance announced the appointment of Rob Mains as its new executive director in February 2021. Mains brings over 35 years of software engineering experience, including 25 years in EDA software for microprocessor design, with prior roles at Qualcomm, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and IBM. The organization focuses on advancing open-source hardware IP, interconnect protocols, and software tools for chip design.

Key Points

  • •Rob Mains appointed as CHIPS Alliance executive director with 35+ years in software engineering and EDA tools.
  • •CHIPS Alliance has 25+ members collaborating on open-source SoCs, peripherals, and development tools.
  • •Organization aims to lower barriers and costs in hardware IP development through open collaboration.
  • •CHIPS Alliance is hosted by the Linux Foundation, connecting it to a broad open-source ecosystem.
  • •Focus on growing membership and advancing open hardware to reduce design barriers and development costs.

Cached Content Preview

HTTP 200Fetched May 25, 20263 KB
CHIPS Alliance Brings on Rob Mains as New Executive Director

 February 8, 2021

 3 minutes 

 462 words 

 #announcement Industry veteran to lead open hardware consortium democratizing silicon innovation 

 SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 8, 2021 – CHIPS Alliance, the leading consortium advancing common and open hardware for interfaces, processors and systems, today announced the appointment of Rob Mains as the organization’s new executive director.

 Rob has over 35 years of experience in software engineering and development, with 25 years of experience as an EDA software architect focused on microprocessor design and advanced process node technologies. He most recently served as a technology advisor at Spillbox, and prior to that worked in leadership and senior engineering roles at Qualcomm, Sun Microsystems (staying on at Oracle after the acquisition) and IBM. Throughout his career, Rob has worked closely with hardware developers to play a hands-on role in helping to devise innovative solutions for a wide range of applications.

 “Rob is an ideal fit for the CHIPS Alliance with his strong leadership experience and deep understanding of the silicon industry,” said Dr. Zvonimir Bandić, Chairman, CHIPS Alliance. “As the CHIPS Alliance runs full steam ahead with its growing membership, impressive technical milestones and other activities, we look forward to having Rob on board to continue this strong momentum.”

 “As more companies are looking to open source solutions to help eliminate design barriers, reduce costs and speed up development time, the CHIPS Alliance will play a critical role in advancing open hardware for the benefit of everyone,” said Mains. “I look forward to working closely with CHIPS Alliance members to continue the organization’s goals, while also focusing on growing the membership base.”

 Today the CHIPS Alliance has more than 25 members collaborating to accelerate the creation and deployment of open system-on-chips (SoCs), peripherals and software development tools for a wide range of applications. To learn more, check out the CHIPS Alliance 2020 Annual Report: https://chipsalliance.org/chips-alliance-2020-annual-report/ .

 About the CHIPS Alliance

 The CHIPS Alliance is an organization which develops and hosts high-quality, open source hardware code (IP cores), interconnect IP (physical and logical protocols), and open source software development tools for design, verification, and more. The main aim is to provide a barrier-free collaborative environment, to lower the cost of developing IP and tools for hardware development. The CHIPS Alliance is hosted by the Linux Foundation. For more information, visit chipsalliance.org.

 About the Linux Foundation

 The Linux Foundation was founded in 2000 and has since become the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Today, the Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and its projects are critical to the world’s 

... (truncated, 3 KB total)
Resource ID: ae1ef50af4e089cc | Stable ID: sid_zjTOtd44NQ