The FOSSi Foundation is proud to announce Latch-Up (latchup.io), a conference dedicated to free and open source silicon to be held over the weekend of May 4th and 5th in Portland, Oregon, USA.

Latch-Up opens a new chapter for the FOSSi Foundation, with it being the first event in the spirit of ORConf held in North America. Latch-Up is a community-focused conference for open source semiconductor, digital design and embedded systems professionals and enthusiasts. Expect presentations on a wide range of topics; open source IP blocks and SoCs, open source simulators, compilers, synthesis and physical implementation tools for both FPGA and ASIC.

What is Latch-Up?

Technically speaking, latch-up is a short circuit, an inadvertent path of low-impedance. We have co-opted this word to represent what we’d like to encourage among members of the community: paths of communication leading to collaboration, inadvertent or not.

Latch-Up aims to bring together the North American open source digital design community for an event in the mould of ORConf - the FOSSi Foundation’s annual European community conference. Like ORConf, Latch-Up will be will be free to attend and consist of a relaxed format of presentations and discussions throughout a weekend, with plenty of time for networking. A dinner on the Saturday evening will be arranged and all attendees are invited to attend.

These events go to the FOSSi Foundations’ goal of lowering barriers of entry to the digital design field, whilst encouraging the open source development model and promoting open collaboration.

We recognise the keen interest in this area in the Americas and this year are putting effort into organizing an event which will encourage wider awareness amongst enthusiasts of the projects that we’ve been hearing about at ORConf since 2012.

ORConf’s History

ORConf began as the annual OpenRISC developer meetup in 2012. The scope of the event widened soon after to include all things open source digital design. This annual gathering of Europe’s open source digital design community now attracts speakers and attendees from all over the world, with attendance numbers in excess of 100 for each day of the event.

ORConf began at a time when open source digital design was experiencing increased awareness and participation. It was the right place and the right time, and possibly the right approach in an industry typically dominated by more corporate conferences, and ORConf has become the de facto main independent open source digital design conference in Europe.

ORConf and Latch-Up

Latch-Up will complement ORConf by helping the FOSSi Foundation’s efforts to foster the growth of the open source digital design community in North America. We will endeavour to host both events each year.

“ORConf has been a huge success and we definitely want to keep doing that. Extending our efforts to host Latch-Up will allow us to bring the ORConf experience to North America, making it more convenient for people based there to participate in our events.” says FOSSi Foundation director Olof Kindgren

So let’s catch up at Latch-Up!

Visiting Latch-Up

The event will be free of charge but attendees are required to register here. As with all events organized by FOSSi Foundation, participants are expected to follow the FOSSi Foundation code of conduct

Speaking at Latch-Up

Presentation submissions are now open! Submit your proposals here

We invite anyone who is involved in any aspect of open source digital design and embedded systems engineering to join us and choose between anything from a lightning talk up to a 30 minute presentation on a relevant topic.

All presentations at Latch-Up will be recorded and posted on the FOSSi Foundation’s YouTube channel under a CC-BY license after the event.

Supporting Latch-up

Latch-Up will be free of charge to attend but we aim to raise money to provide catering throughout the event, and possibly cover the cost of the conference dinner on the Saturday night. Events like Latch-Up are a great way to get your brand in front of a passionate audience of engineers. Please get in touch if you’d like to view our sponsorship packages and help make Latch-Up a success.

We also need folks on the ground to lend a hand - so if you have any expertise in helping to run or staff such events, your help would be greatly appreciated, so please do get in touch to let us know you’d like to help out.

When and where

The conference will be held during the weekend May 4-5 2019 in Portland, Oregon USA. The exact times and venue are still to be confirmed.

All event information will be available at latchup.io