IDG Contributor Network: Why the time is right for open source to meet hardware

SiFive is a San Francisco-based fabless chip manufacturing startup that is developing the first fully open source chips. The company, which launched earlier this month, announced two chips of their flagship platform:  Freedom U500 and Freedom E300, each targeting different audience. We caught up with Kang to talk about the Freedom platform, the challenges of starting an open source hardware company, SiFive’s business model and more. Following is an edited version of that interview.
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